I saw something that could hold a fistful of galaxies and swallow them, like a man would take an aspirin. It had no shape except every shape; it was too large to describe, and again, my vocabulary fails me anyway.
I was Moses, glimpsing the backside of God for an instant and going blind. And if this astonishing entity can be called Our Father, we are all a terrible accident of stardust and electricity, and there is no meaning for any of us. We may as well let Him swallow us, too, for all that it would matter.
I’d forgotten the reverend was there, until he said, “The portal only goes one way. We can send Him gifts and prayers, but He cannot join us here. Ruth will change that. She will be the door through which He enters, tonight—before the last rumble of His heartbeat fades away.”
“That . . . this noise . . . ? It’s the beating of that thing’s heart?”
“No,” he corrected me gently. “It is a single beat, offered once every thousand years. It is His knock upon the door.”
A scrap of scripture sprang unwelcome to mind, and I whispered it without meaning to. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
He finished it for me. “‘If any man hear my voice, and open that door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him—and he with me.’ From Revelations, of course. The last book ever written that ever meant a thing. And tonight is the last night. They will find Ruth, and they will bring her to me. She will serve as the door, and a new world order will begin.”
“No.”
“You might as well argue with the dawn. You might as well fight against math.”
“No,” I said again.
A thought bubbled up and I pushed it down; I used all my experience working down the hall from Drake, who reads minds by accident or design, and I shrouded the thought—I buried it with other thoughts, smothering it with my senses. I concentrated on the smell of the curling smoke rising up around us. I concentrated on the salt, and the cold feel of the floor beneath my feet (so cold I could feel it through my shoes). Could I thwart a god? It depended on whether the god was paying attention, and I truly did not think that it was.
“No,” I repeated for a third time. “None of that can happen.”
“There’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”
“You’re wrong. About everything,” I told him. I gazed down through that window, at the wonders of the universe that I surely would never see again, and I concentrated on that, too. Anything to hide what I was really thinking.
Because I was really thinking of grabbing the reverend by the lapels (or whatever bit of robe was there about his throat) and drawing him forward—yanking him off his feet, and throwing him through that one-way portal. I didn’t think it, not with the forefront of my brain. I only acted upon it.
It happened fast. We were both surprised.
It happened easy, because I am so heavy and he was a lean man. I used my weight against him, and I hefted him up off his feet, and I flung him through the window—nearly toppling in after him.
He said nothing. He screamed nothing. And he did not appear on the other side like I might have expected; he only vanished, a tiny dot of nothing that did not rouse his slumbering god in the slightest.
But I . . . I took a moment to regain my balance.
In that moment I was half tempted, against all reason, to let go and fall in after him. Would it have been the worst of endings? To see, in that final glimpse, the wonders of creation, or evolution, or random nonsense that became the glorious cosmos with my own two eyes?
I leaned back and gripped the edges of the lovely white altar. It grew colder beneath my hands. So cold that when I removed them I left some skin behind. Then I was frightened, because the light was dimming. The room was dimming. The little cairns with their scented offerings were dimming, the coals going pink, then white, then gray.
The great chamber shifted beneath me, and I stumbled.
I fell backward down those three stairs and landed on my (now very sore) hands, but I rolled and righted myself—back onto my feet. I’d done something. I didn’t quite know what, but I was pretty sure I’d sent the reverend well away from Ruth.
The floor shifted. The salt lines scattered.
A loud crack sounded overhead, and there were the stars. Just like that. The black, smooth nothingness above me was a proper night sky lit up like it damn well ought to be. But that wasn’t possible, because I was four stories belowground (at least) and it didn’t matter how lifelike the moon and stars appeared, because they couldn’t be real. They didn’t make sense.
The altar was dimming down to nothingness. In another minute, it’d be as dark as the cold ashes where the planets used to be. The moon and stars (real or false) were the only light I had to show me the way up and out, and even with their help I could barely find my way back to the stairs.
Another loud crack, and the altar went dark.
A third, and the floor heaved violently—flinging me forward onto the stairwell, thank God (whichever one). Again I landed on my hands, which now bled and (I would later learn) one had been broken in two places, but I used them to scramble up the stairs, regardless. The chamber was settling, twisting, and collapsing—and I did not know what became of the moon and stars. Were they ever there with me at all, or was it only some helpful gasp of some lesser deity out to lend a hand?
I climbed for all I was worth, fast as I could, leaning against the wall and holding my injured hand as I stumbled upward. The nearer I got to the top, the louder I heard voices—angry ones, confused ones—swearing and yelling back and forth to one another over the sound of a place collapsing, or a god deciding it was time to move on to other things.
I wanted to yell, too. My left hand was aching and beginning to swell. But my right one was undamaged enough to hold a gun, so I had to quit pitying myself and arm myself instead. I drew the weapon for the last few steps of the flight, though I was panting so hard I couldn’t hold it steady enough to fire.
No one noticed at first. No one (or no thing) in the smooth dark robes turned to look at the gasping fat man with a gun, and that was all right with me. I pushed myself onward, past the ones who paid me no mind as they debated loudly what was going on. Their arguments sounded as weird as everything else—like they weren’t speaking English, or Latin, or any other language known to man. They conversed in hisses and whines, like animals. (Not like angels at all.)
I tried to follow my mental map of how I’d gotten there in the first place, and reverse engineer it back to the surface; it was trickier than it should have been, for now things were not quiet and dark, but loud and dark—and crowded, too. Where did they all come from? How many were there? I couldn’t tell, for they were all dressed alike and all had powder-pale faces that were hard to distinguish one from the next, and there was light now—a little, here and there. Someone had a lantern, and someone had some matches, and all the fun of running about in the dark was well and truly over. For me, and for all of them, indistinguishable in the half-light and chaos.
Until I saw him.
He was swooping toward me, not recognizing me (I don’t think), but running with fury toward the Holiest of Holies, which was no doubt collapsed upon itself by then—if the rocking, thundering, grumbling cacophony could be believed. But then he saw me, and he drew up short. He tried to draw up short, anyway. The motion of the ground flung us both around, and neither one of us was steady at all.
He reached into his robe. Was he going for a firearm? I believed so at the time. He’d already murdered my friend James Coyle, and he’d been prepared to sacrifice his own daughter to the machinations of this church that was never a church.
Would he have killed me? Yes, given half a chance. So it was self-defense, you see, and a matter of timing, that’s all. I was holding my gun already. He had to fish his free from the drapes of something ceremonial and impractical.
I did not honestly expect to h
it him. I was on the verge of doubling over from exhaustion, and the pain in my left hand was plenty distracting, too. Even if the floors weren’t shaking and the walls weren’t leaning inward, the odds of me making that shot couldn’t have been good.
Would it be preposterous to suggest that I had help?
I might have had help. Before I pulled the trigger there was a chill around my ankles that crept up my side and up to my wrist and fingers. It happened in less than a second, but it steadied me. It was as if some other hand was holding on to mine, and giving it the stability I required to shoot Edwin Stephenson square in the face.
Because that’s what happened.
I don’t really have to put this here. It’s tantamount to a murder confession, and an unnecessary one at that—since they never recovered much in the way of corpses from Chapelwood, least of all his. I suppose I’m including it because I want this to be a complete accounting of what occurred, even if I am not cast in an entirely positive light. If anything, should this account become public, perhaps the reader will only assume I’ve gone mad. Or, in a more just world, this fictional reader will correctly judge that Edwin Stephenson had it coming, and I was simply the method by which it arrived.
Regardless.
It’s done. He’s dead. His face exploded and I was stunned, but not for long enough to second-guess myself.
I ran.
I kept running.
And when I reached fresh air again, there at ground level, I ran back to the car. It was still there, as I suspected it would be. Lizbeth wasn’t there, and neither was Ruth—but I didn’t expect them to be. I wished with all my heart that they were well away from that place by then, and that they’d met Chief Eagan at the road, as planned.
The earth rolled and wobbled . . . and sank. A foot or two at a time, then a yard, then a great collapse that began at the center. I scarcely had time to start the car and put it into gear, and even with all my haste—never mind my broken hand—I escaped that place with one tire at the edge of the abyss as it blossomed beneath the earth, swallowing everything behind me, an acre at a time until I finally ran out of running room.
In the middle of that stupid dirt path which passed for a road, someone had abandoned a truck. There was no way around it. There was no one in it, though when I exited my own vehicle and took a quick look, I saw blood on the hood of the thing—and I tried not to consider the implications. (I would later learn from Ruth that this was Nathaniel Barrett’s truck, and that she’d last seen Lizbeth there.)
The world was still falling away behind me, after all. The back half of my car was sinking, the front end rising up like a ship about to slide underwater after a long and terrible sinking.
I had no time to consider the implications.
I only had time to trade one set of wheels for another, and praise be—the keys were still in the truck’s ignition. For that matter, the thing was still running, so whoever had abandoned it had done so in great haste.
It was my turn for great haste.
The tires spun behind me, peppering the nearby trees with dirt and rocks, but those trees were disappearing anyway, falling over and falling down and falling away, like everything else.
I made it to the road, and found Chief Eagan with Pedro Gussman. Most of the rescue party had left the road already, heading back to town to escape whatever unnatural disaster was taking place at Chapelwood—now that Ruth had been found. She was wrapped in a blanket staring at the trees when I emerged in my borrowed truck, and for a moment her eyes lit up. Then they went dark again.
She and Pedro and the chief were the last ones remaining. They’d stayed despite the quake, the thunder, the violence from the shattering, sinking earth, hoping that Lizbeth would emerge from Chapelwood.
But she never did.
Gaspera Lorino
ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL DECEMBER 25, 1921
(LETTER ADDRESSED TO SIMON WOLF, BOSTON)
On Christmas Eve, my sister brought me new stockings and a cap she knitted, and a gingerbread loaf she baked in our mother’s old oven. She sat with me for an hour and took some tea, and she listened patiently while I tried to explain things she would never understand—things I should never attempt to burden her with. It’s unfair of me, but I feel like these secrets, these numbers, these mysteries . . . they overflow, and they spill out whether I want them to or not.
I wish poor Leonard had not left me. I wish you would come back. I attempted to write you a letter once before, but the gray lady said that Camille never sent it. She burned it in the oven, where she baked the gingerbread loaf.
I wish I had someone to listen and learn when I tell the truth. So I am trying this again, and I will slip this missive to the orderly, George, for he has always been kind to me. Maybe you will read this. I hope you read this. I hope you write me back, or better yet, return.
In this place, I am going as mad as they think.
The great heart has sounded its beat, and is silent again for another span of lifetimes. The balance is restored, and the pattern is repaired, for now. That uncertain in-between place, that muddled place where the monsters come from, and where the monsters return to—but so do the angels and heroes who tiptoe too close to its edges—that place has never been nearer, or more dangerous.
The gray lady was one of its monsters. Lizbeth Andrew might have become another, but she was lucky—she was strong, and she flew close to that sun but not so close that her wings ever failed her. She kept her balance. She only passed to the other side, where the ordinary dead may wander, yet linger close if they choose.
The two women are separated for infinity. It’s not what either of them wanted, but it’s what the pattern required.
You need to know, Mr. Wolf—you, too, have touched the middle distance. You spent enough time in the sixth room that you must surely smell of it, to those who know what that clinging miasmic scent must mean. Now you must cling to your sanity and your soul. You might be called upon again one day to put them on the line against some force of unbalance. You and the girl, Ruth. You’re the only two who might answer such a call. For I am no longer able, and everyone else is dead, or otherwise gone.
Everyone.
Ruth Stephenson
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS JANUARY 1, 1922
Pedro understood.
It was never really a love match anyway, though I felt fond enough toward him to live with him. We made a go of it, but it wasn’t going anywhere, and we both knew it. Neither one of us was too broke up about it.
I sold my parents’ house, and me and Pedro split the money. He said maybe he’d go back to Puerto Rico, but I don’t know if he ever did. I said I was going to travel, but I didn’t know where. He didn’t ask any questions after that. We’d run out of things to talk about, anyway.
I’d lied a little bit, when I told him I didn’t know where I’d visit. I knew good and well where I was going. I had a train ticket and everything, but I didn’t mention it. From there on out, where I went and what I did was a secret. Nobody’s business but my own.
That’s what Inspector Wolf told me, when he answered the phone call I made from George Ward’s house to that office in Boston. He said to come on out, and he’d meet me at the station.
He was as good as his word.
He ran me through the office of their “Quiet Society,” as they call it. He introduced me to a man named Drake, and told him that I was the most promising medium they’d brought on board since some lady whose name I didn’t recognize or remember. I’m not sure how I feel about being called that. Consorting with spirits is supposed to be bad, and not just for Catholics, but for everyone else, too. Except the spiritualists. I’ve met a few of them now. They don’t seem so bad, but I don’t want to join them.
I hope you don’t take it too personal, Father, but I’m not sure I want to be a Catholic anymore. I just don’t know about God. If He’s out there, I
don’t know if He cares what we do or how we do it. I don’t know if it matters.
Inspector Wolf—he says to call him Simon, but I don’t find it easy—says that there’s a school of thought that says I should believe and practice the faith anyway. If I’m wrong, I’ve lived a righteous life, and that’s the worst that comes of it. If I’m right, I get to go to heaven.
I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think it’s sad.
I would like to see you again. That’s one reason I keep wearing the cross, and the little Saint Jude medallion you left me. He’s the patron saint of hopeless causes, that’s what you told me. I don’t think any cause ever got more hopeless than mine.
Simon says I’m too hard on myself.
I guess it’s getting easier to call him Simon after all.
• • •
Anyway, he took me into his office for something he called “orientation,” which just meant that he was telling me who everybody was, what everybody did, and what was expected of me—if I was going to work here. It was overwhelming, but exciting, too.
It’s nice to be excited about something again. It’s been a while since that happened.
His office is about as big as a bedroom, with bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling; I bet he can’t even reach the top ones without a step stool. All over his desk there are folders and photographs, charts and maps, and all kinds of things held together with paper clips and tape. He has a coffee cup full of pens and pencils, and when he opened his top drawer, it sounded like he had a flask in there and at least a couple of glasses. He didn’t offer me anything, and I didn’t ask.
“You’ll have an office, too. Drake and Evans are having a spot cleared out as we speak.”
“Did someone leave?”
“Someone died.”
“Close enough,” I said.
“I trust you don’t mind inheriting a dead man’s office . . . ?”