Fitcher's Brides (28 page)

Then suddenly the dark stripes had marched up before her and she raised a hand protectively and stopped. She had nearly collided with the fence.

It had been built right up to the edge. She clutched the bars and pushed her face into the space between them. There was the bridge, five hundred yards distant beyond the bend, a cruel glimpse of freedom and impossible to reach. Where the wrought iron ended, a person might have been able to swing out and around to the other side, but they would have to be willing to dangle in space with nothing below them and nothing to hold on to but the black uprights. The cliff offered no purchase. She could picture herself falling to her death.

She had also inadvertently rejoined the path. Narrower now, it ran along the inside of the fence. At least she wouldn't have to navigate more thorns to get back. She would simply follow the fence.

It brought her out of the woods between the orchard and the house, and just on the edge of a cemetery. There were dozens of small headstones. One grave looked newer than the others, and she supposed it must have been that of Bill, the man who'd hanged himself, although that surely happened months ago. The rest didn't look very old, either: A lot of people had died in just the few years Harbinger had existed.

People were working in the fields; others in the orchard were wrapping something around the smaller trees, probably to keep deer away. The afternoon meal had surely come and gone. There was nothing to do but return to the house.

She glanced up. Sunlight flared off the glass of the pyramid at the top, creating a spectrum, reminding her of the waterfall in the gorge. Behind the colors, something moved. There was someone up there, someone inside the pyramid.

Vern stood awhile, watching. Her hand moved into her pocket and curled around the keys. Her fingers identified the larger glass one. Her mouth set in determination. She was going to get up there.

It was time to learn Harbinger's secrets.

T
HE FOYER WAS DESERTED WHEN
she entered it, but she encountered Margaretta on the stairs. The dark-haired Margaretta said, “Ah, I vas looking for you to see if you vere
wohl
. When you did not come for the meal.”

Vern made a smile. “I'm fine, thank you. I went for a walk in the woods.”

“So,” was Margaretta's reply, as if that summed everything up. She patted Vern's shoulder and continued down the steps. If she had noticed the condition of Vern's clothing, she gave no indication.

Vern reached her room, locking the door after her. Setting the keys and the egg on top of the commode, she took off her dress, now stained and torn. Her hands were dirty, her calves scratched, hosiery all but ruined. She poured water in the basin and rinsed her hands and face. She stuffed the ruined dress inside the armoire, and put on the blue dress she'd worn the previous night. It wasn't fresh, but at least it wasn't in need of stitching.

She picked up the keys again, but stood before the commode awhile, staring at the egg, debating whether to take it or not; but remembering how it had disappeared beneath the pillows the night before, she finally slipped the egg into the small kerchief pocket between her breasts again before going out.

The hallway was dark and silent. While she intended to find the stairs up to the pyramid, she wanted most to find Elias's rooms. She wasn't forbidden to seek out those, unless the glass key turned out to be the key that opened them. Even if it was, she was half determined to use it.

She crossed to the first door on the opposite side. Although it was identical to hers, it didn't take the same key. There were six keys on the ring that looked identical. On her third try she chose the one that fit the door.

The room inside was a near-mirror image of her own, with a single bed and sparse furniture. It was musty, and heavy drapes hung over the window, letting in only a glow of daylight, but enough for her to make out cobwebs and dust. It was a room for ghosts. Clearly, no one lived here, and hadn't from the time the house had been constructed.

She closed and locked the door, then tried the next. The same key opened it, and she supposed the keys and locks might be identical on different sides of the hall. This second room was like the one beside it and hers, save that the bed had no canopy but was low with black iron rails, and the walls were painted some greenish color. The drape had slipped from the rod above the window, letting in much more light, which gave the room a submarine essence. It was not as dusty as the first, but just as empty.

Guest rooms
, she thought as she closed the door. He'd said as much, hadn't he? But aside from Reverend Fitcher and herself, what guests were expected? If everyone else lived in dormitories, then who were these rooms meant for? Probably because she occupied one, she thought the rooms seemed inherently feminine, although admittedly there was nothing in their composition to indicate it, save perhaps for the canopy beds.

Methodically she opened every door on the second floor, first down one side and then down the other. Most of the rooms were the same. Disused. Vacant. Had they not seemed so utterly lifeless, she might have thought they belonged to Elias's inner circle—to those who had accompanied him. However, a few—those farther back on her side of the hall—suggested some more recent use. In the one next to hers there were dead flowers in a vase, a locked wardrobe, tortoiseshell brushes, and a pair of small boots. The boots were dusty, but not terribly so.
Some
one had lived there not so long ago.

She passed her own room again, but didn't open it, admitting to an absurd fear that if she did, she would find it as dusty and barren as the rest.

When she'd opened every room on the second floor, she knew Elias's quarters weren't there. More than that, she knew she was the only person living on the floor. Her earlier sense of isolation had proved true.

She descended the steps to the landing, where she chose the alternate staircase, the one that led to the third floor. All this time she'd known it was there, but not once had she looked up at the long steep climb or considered how odd this arrangement of stairways was.

Unlike the stairs below, these had no runner. They were plain pine coated with a yellowish varnish and reminded her of the stairwell in her house, the one to the attic. The enclosed stairwell was narrow and claustrophobic, offering little headroom. She held on to the railing and went up. At the top hung a drapery, parted in the middle. Beyond it was a hallway like the one below if significantly darker. Doors lined both walls. She wished she'd brought a candle, and had to fumble through the keys, holding them up against the brighter patch of light between the drapes to identify them.

Despite this handicap, it took her only two tries to find one that fit the first door. The handle rattled loosely in its collar as she turned it. The door creaked on its hinges. The room was in better shape than those below. It wasn't dusty at all, although it was curtained, with only a little sunlight spilling through the slit between. It smelled, not of mustiness, but of sweat, of recent habitation. The narrow foyer opened onto a larger room, and someone could easily have been hiding out of sight there. She didn't think so—the room didn't feel occupied—but she was reluctant to enter. She backed out and closed and locked the door again.

When she put the key to the next door, it opened. It had been hanging on the latch, unlocked. This one smelled worse, giving off the reek of a chamber pot that needed changing. Vern thought, as the door swung open, that in the dim recesses something shifted; but the odor was like a barrier, and she didn't even want to call out. Whoever could exist in that atmosphere was not someone she wanted close by. She withdrew, and closed the door firmly after her. For a moment she hesitated, then locked the door. If someone
was
lurking in there, she would not give them the chance to surprise her.

At the third door, Vern thought to knock. There was no reply, but the door was also unlocked. Inside, the remains of a candle was burning on a small dresser, with wax pooled around it. It might have been burning for hours. The little flame threw enough light upon the wall above it for her to see that someone had written something there. She crept inside, leaned her head around the corner far enough to see the rest of the room. It was empty. In fact, except for the small desk, there wasn't even any furniture. She turned her attention to the writing above the candle. The words had been written in a spiraling circle, beginning in the center and whirling outward. They read: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God. And the books were opened.”

Almost the instant she finished reading it, she was overwhelmed by the sensation of someone behind her. She turned quickly. The doorway was empty. No one was there, but now the sensation enveloped her again—someone was behind her in the
room
. She swung around, her arm out to ward anyone off. The room was barren. Quickly she retreated, slammed the door, and locked it.

It took her a moment to cast off the terror she'd conjured. She put her hand to her breast, felt the lump of the egg there. “Stupid,” she muttered, “you're acting like Amy.” Amy could scare herself to death if left alone for two minutes; and Vern smiled, thinking about her. She had to go home after this. She had to get away from Harbinger. For now, however, she stiffened her resolve to finish what she'd started.

She crossed the hall and tried the first three doors on that side. The same key didn't work those, and she spent time finding the one that did: as with the second floor, one key for each side of the hall.

The rooms were mirror images of each other. One stank of cigars, another of a fire that had been doused, perhaps upon her approach, she couldn't say, but the room was smoky. Where the almost abandoned second floor had borne an unmistakable feminine aspect, this one was utterly male. The dwellers in the dark here were men, she was certain of it.

Dark angels
. Dark angels, the way the spirit of Samuel in her house was a dark angel. He hadn't harmed her. Yet in her dreams, in the dark warped halls not so unlike this house, something malefic had pursued her.

Vern looked at the other doors and decided that she didn't need to open any more of them. Elias did not live here, either. She wasn't going to find his room, not on this floor, either. She was certain of it.

The last one on the right was a smaller door than the rest, as to a cupboard. This end of the hall was too dark, however, for her to make out anything distinct. She tried the key she'd used for the other doors along that side, and it was too large to fit.

Once again, she held the keys up one at a time against the brightness emerging from between the now distant drapes; but even that didn't help her much. It was certainly not the lock for the glass key. It would, she suspected, prove to be a cupboard.

She stepped back, leaning to steady herself against what she thought was solid wall, and nearly toppled backward. Quickly she caught herself, stumbling.

She squinted into the gloom. The hall's end was not a wall. A vertical line of casing was just visible as a stripe that wasn't quite as dark as that which lay in the center. She reached out, touching it, touching stone. And in that black center, what seemed like blank wall was in fact a recess. She dared to stick her hand into the darkness, touching nothing. The air was much colder, though, as if a draft flowed up through the floorboards. She edged forward, hand extended, until she touched the door.

It had to be black, because she could see nothing of it. Her fingers felt inset panels slick with a rime of ice, the spade shape of a large hinge, and across from it the lock stile and handle and keyhole. When her hand passed before the keyhole something flashed. She moved her hand back, watching a point of light flow across her palm. Crouching down, she peered into the keyhole.

It was a large hole, but afforded her nothing more than a nondescript view of something bright with reflected color—the lip of something, a bathtub perhaps.

She took hold of the handle to stand. It was thin and elegant, knurled, and icy cold. She snatched back her hand, placed it against her breast, and felt the lump of the egg there. The air seemed to come alive with a tiny whispering voice that she knew was only in her head—an interior voice compelling her, urging her.

Would this give her the access to the pyramid or let her into the secret rooms her husband kept? Instinct told her which key to use. It was obvious. It had to be
that
key.

She remembered what her husband had said. She knew he didn't want her to enter his private domain: the chamber of Elias Fitcher. The truth of him. But all the admonishments in the world couldn't have kept Vern from fitting the shaft of that key into that hole. It slid in as if the one fluidly embraced the other. Turned and pushed the mechanism with such lubricated slyness that she hardly felt the bolt release. Standing in that cold spot, as the door inched inward she sighed, and it seemed the door was hissing at her, releasing a kept atmosphere around her, drawing her in, her hand upon the handle as if frozen to the metal, unable to release it, unable any longer to escape her fate.

Light spilled down just inside the doorway, a wedge of brightness casting everything behind it into murkiness. The air from the hall collided with the chill in the chamber and produced a mist, a sparkling, smoky membrane before her.

The colors and light came from a large stained-glass panel fitted into the ceiling. It showed Adam and Eve standing on either side of the tree of knowledge, with the serpent, as large as either of them, entwined around its trunk. The heads of the figures were almost directly above hers. Eve's eyes were cast down. Adam stared across at her in judgment. The serpent, its head bowed, eyed her sidelong with heavy-lidded mockery. The tip of its tail was curled around her ankle.

What Vern had seen through the keyhole was the lip of a large bronze cauldron. Raised figures decorated the side of it, but she couldn't make them out too well and drew closer.

Peripherally, she noticed on the far wall shapes like canvas sacks or animal carcasses. Now she could see the cauldron better. Along the side of it, human forms in bas-relief wrapped around each other. Large heads with long snouts and round eyes, more animal than human, pushed out from between the figures. There seemed to be lines of text here and there as well but in a language she couldn't identify. Grabbing the lip, she knelt and looked at them closely. The figures might have been intertwined sexually except that many looked to be in agony. Heads were thrown back, mouths gaped in silent cries, and the bodies were contorted. She pulled herself up. The mist had thinned. Vern looked straight across the room at the shapes hanging on the wall.

There were four of them. They were women's torsos.

The heads and limbs had been hacked off. Two hung upside down, robbed of context, dehumanized into things so abstract that at first she could not comprehend what she was seeing; her revulsion grew slowly, and then it became too awful, too horrible to see, and she had to look away.

She looked down. Into the cauldron.

It was half full of liquid, a red-stained solution. In the center, four hands stuck out like little trees planted in a circle. Something like moss was tangled in the decaying finger branches. It was hair—hair strung from beneath the surface of the solution, strung from the most terrible sight of all. From severed heads.

There were four of them, too, all women. Hair of gold and red and black waved like seaweed below the surface. Through the strands the stare of milky eyes met hers. The eyes were all pale marbles, dead as stones. The mouth of the nearest was open as if to say “Oh,” as if death had come as a tiny surprise.

Vern dropped the key ring.

The instant she let go she knew it. The keys fell and she lunged to grab them, catching them just above the bloody surface. Only the glass key, longer than the rest, dipped for an instant into the imbruement. Ripples raced away from it. The marble egg slid from the pocket between her breasts. She sensed it happening, collapsed her arm, and bent almost double to trap it. Cold fingers poked at her cheek. She trapped the egg in the crook of her elbow, curled her hand, and clutched it to her breasts. The contents of the jostled cauldron splashed against the side. One single sanguinary drop spattered the egg.