On the Fifth Day (20 page)

"The shadow-cross from the House of the Bicentenary?

No, why?"

"Do you think it possible that the crucifix that left that im

pression on the wall could have been found?"

"No," she said, taking a slug from her water bottle. Thomas raised his eyebrows.

"You sound pretty sure," he said.

"I am," she replied. "The 'crucifix' that left that impression could not be found because it wasn't a crucifix that made the mark. Simple as that."

"How can you be so sure? I've seen the mark. It certainly looks like a cross."

"I know," she said, unruffled. "But lots of things can leave cross-shaped marks. It could have been nothing more than a shelf bracket."

"But lots of people believe it was a Christian cross,"

Thomas began, "I've read half a dozen accounts of it . . ."

"Online?"

"Yes," said Thomas, wilting a little at the amusement in her eyes.

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"Next time you have a free moment on the Internet, try typing 'faked moon landing' into the search engine of your choice," she said. "You'll be amazed at the number of sites that will come up. And if you're still laughing, try typing

'faked Holocaust.' "

Her smile was less broad now, more knowing.

"Okay," said Thomas, "so there's a lot of crap on the Web, much of it posted by wackos and people with an agenda . . ."

"And the incredibly badly informed who think they have the whole story because they want to believe it," she said.

"Look in respectable, musty, academic books published by reputable presses and you'll see that while it is quite possible that there were Christians in Herculaneum, they almost cer

tainly weren't using crucifixes in their worship and wouldn't for about another three hundred years."

"What about the magic square in Pompeii?"

"What about it? That same square pops up all over the Ro

man Empire. It's a word puzzle, and doesn't clearly have any mystical significance, let alone a Christian one. Yes, it can spell out
Pater Noster
--if you leave out a few letters--but it can spell out a bunch of things, mostly gibberish. There's nothing cruciform about the layout of the square. Turning it into a cross requires a real leap of faith. Again, people want to find a clear and unchanging version of their own religion, so they do. That doesn't mean it's there."

Thomas felt at sea, not just because he felt as if he'd been exposed as gullible, but because the sands beneath his sense of Ed's death--which had always been inconstant--seemed now to be washing away, leaving him standing on nothing at all. It was as if she'd given his mosaic a kick and what little of the image he had managed to piece together had been scattered.

"But isn't that argument about there not being any early crosses a self-fulfilling prophecy?" he said. "I mean, if each one is dismissed because it's too early . . . ?"

"I suppose," she conceded. "But the cross starts cropping up all over the Roman Empire
after
Constantine makes Chris

tianity 'official,' but that's not till the fourth century. If the 144

A. J. Hartley

cross
was
used as a symbol before then, it's an aberration. The fish is much more consistent with early Christianity. The the

ology of redemption took centuries to mature. It's only after the belief that Jesus came to the world
in order
to die and re

deem it that the cross becomes the center of Christianity. That just isn't where the religion was in AD 79."

Thomas had sat silently on a tree stump above the exca

vated squares of earth. From here he could look back toward the ancient town and glimpse the tops of the stone temples that glowed amber in the early evening light. He didn't know what to say.

"Did this Japanese guy say anything to you about what this crucifix was supposed to look like?" Deborah asked.

"Silver," Thomas answered. "Marked with the sign of the fish."

She frowned.

"I suppose it's not completely impossible," she said. "If you accept the idea that first-century Christians used crosses--

which I don't. Pompeii did have some fine silver, and the fish symbol makes sense as part of the design."

"But you don't buy it," said Thomas.

"Sorry," she said. "If it's any consolation, I doubt Ed would have bought it either. He knew this stuff better than I do."

Thomas scowled.

"I should be heading back before I miss the last train," he said, not entirely sure when the last train was. He had been here much longer than he had intended and it would be dark soon.

"Hang on," she said, "I'll walk back with you. I like to walk through the site at this time, after the tourists have left. No of

fense."

"Am I a tourist? I thought I was a detective."

They walked in companionable silence through the dark

ening fields, and Thomas considered how odd it was that he should have spent so much of the last few days with women he didn't know. Not including his former students--whom he didn't consider adults in spite of the politically correct 145

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

literature passed along to him by the social studies teacher--

he had probably spoken more to Deborah and Sister Roberta than to any woman in weeks. Maybe longer. He wondered why, wondered also if he found either of them attractive. They both were, in different ways, but the idea had not occurred to him till now.

It never does, does it? Not since . . .

Enough of that.

"How long will you be in Italy?" he said.

"A week," she answered.

They had reached the edge of the old town and the remains, now largely sapped of color by the fading light, looked hunched and ragged, save where the temples loomed like cliffs in the shadows. They reentered the site. It was closed by now, but the gate stood open and no one was on duty to turn them away or demand tickets. In fact, no one was around at all.

"I'm ready to go home," she said. "The trip has been a blast: an educational blast, but still . . . I'm not a field archae

ologist. I'd rather be cataloging and arranging displays: gives me more control. Sifting through dirt in the vague hope that you may find . . ."

Thomas's eye had been caught by something inside the roped-off Temple of Ceres, a curiously pale shape against the dark mass of a column. He slowed, staring, wondering why he felt a tightening in his gut, a cold dread that made him want to turn away, to run, before his eyes--or his brain--

could make sense of the shape.

"What is that?" he said, very quietly. "It looks like . . ."

He faltered.

"Like a man," said Deborah. The sense of dread had passed to her too. The darkness seemed to be falling fast around them now and there was no sound anywhere in the deserted re

mains.

"We should get out of here," said Thomas. Since Ed's death he had been in danger several times, but he had never felt like this, never been so chilled, so desperate to be else

where. He felt cold. He felt the dull panic of dreams when you 146

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know something terrible is coming but you don't know how to derail the story or wake up.

In a moment,
he thought,
you'll see, and you'll wish you
had never come. You'll wish . . .

"Oh my God," Deborah whispered. They were at the rope now, under the deeper shade cast by the massive temple. "It
is
a man."

And then she was racing forward, clambering over the rope and up the great stone steps, and Thomas was following, drawn magnetically toward it even as he wanted to look away. But by then Deborah had stopped running, had in fact grown quite still, her hands clapped over her mouth to keep the screams in, and Thomas could see the pale flesh, could just about make sense of the blood-streaked corpse tied to the col

umn, tied, it seemed, by its own entrails.

CHAPTER 36

For a long moment they just stood there, paralyzed in their horror. Then Thomas retched hard into the grass, staggering away from the temple to the pillar where he had stood earlier that day, where he had first seen the flash of binoculars . . . He forced himself to turn back toward the body, managed even to take two steps toward it: just enough to be sure.

"It's Satoh," he whispered into the dark.

"Yes," said Deborah quietly. She sounded eerily calm, shocked out of any real feeling.

"Whoever did this," Thomas began, "may . . ."

"Still be here," she concluded in the same drab monotone.

"Yes."

"We need to go. Get help."

"Help?" she said, turning to him with real curiosity. The question caught Thomas like a slap in the face. There 147

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

was no help to be gotten, not for the man trussed up with his belly opened so that everything below the ribs was a slick, black hollow . . .

Don't think about it. Go.

He started to walk, taking her hand as he did so. The gesture seemed to bring her around. He felt her body tauten, her mind snap on, and suddenly she was in control of herself again.

"I know the people at the restaurant on the corner," she said. "Everyone else who works here lives in town. We'll get them to call the police."

She pulled forward and he ran a couple of steps to keep up. They were still holding hands, like the survivors of a ship

wreck afraid of being swept apart. The gate to the road was back the way they had come. Deborah moved resolutely and they surged over the uneven grass. Getting the body behind them was both a relief and the source of a less specific anxi

ety, and Thomas risked a look back into the deepening twi

light of the dead city, stumbling as Deborah stopped without warning.

"What?" he said.

"Look," she whispered, something of the robotic lifeless

ness in her voice again. "Look. The gate."

Thomas looked. The gate through which they had entered the site only moments before had been closed.

"We can get over it," said Thomas.

"Maybe. But who closed it?"

Her point stung him like a spider bite.

"You think he's still in here with us?"

He? What man could do that . . . ?

Deborah shrugged cautiously, her face pale, eyes flashing around.

"I fought Satoh earlier today," said Thomas, "and the guy could look after himself. I don't want to tangle with whoever . . ."

He nodded quickly back toward the temple with its butcher-bird trophy strung up on the column, but managed not to look at it.

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"You think he's waiting for us?" she whispered.

"I think he wanted us to see Satoh," said Thomas, thinking it through. "I think he wants us to be afraid."

Deborah's glance at him was almost sardonic.
Then he's
doing pretty well,
she didn't say. Thomas looked around the expanse of the hulking ruins. It was dark now, and the killer could be anywhere; every broken wall, every weathered and fractured column, every irregular mound of stone and vegeta

tion could be a hiding place or the man himself.
You keep thinking man. It could be a woman. It could be
several people working together.

He didn't think so. He was just old-fashioned enough to find it hard to imagine a woman doing that, and had just enough faith in humanity to doubt that a group of people could do this, working together, discussing it . . .

Worse things have been done by groups, by communities,
by whole complicit nations.

Maybe. But this felt like the handiwork of an individual. Some single, twisted consciousness was behind this, he thought. Someone had enjoyed it.

"There are two ways out," said Deborah. "There, and up between the Temple of Apollo and the Asklepeion. Which do you want to use?"

"This one," he said. "The other means going all the way through the site. There are too many places for him to hide in there."

"But the body is here. The gate was closed here only mo

ments ago," said Deborah. "He must be at this end."

"By the time we worked our way through the ruins he could be waiting for us at the other end. And the road is higher than the site, so he'd be able to see us all the way."

He didn't say that the prospect of returning into that maze of stone in the dark was too terrifying to seriously consider. Deborah looked hard at him, thinking.

"Okay," she said, letting go of his hand as if just realizing he was holding it. "What are you doing?"

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Thomas had stooped to the ground. When he stood up again he held a chunk of rock in one hand.

"In case . . . ," he began.

She nodded quickly, as if she didn't want him to complete the sentence.

Together, cautiously, they began to walk toward the gate. That was when they heard it: a guttural, rasping hiss behind them, unnaturally loud in the night. It was the sound a large cat might make, sucking air through bared fangs. Thomas spun around, looking madly for the source of the noise, his right hand clutching the rock hard, raising it to shoulder height.

Over there at the base of the temple, only yards from the mu

tilated body of Satoh, was a pale figure, crouching batlike on the stone. He was quite still, and at this distance Thomas could see little of him save for the hairless head, the wide open mouth, and the splayed limbs that clung to the rock like some hellish gar

goyle. He was skeletally thin and seemingly naked, and he was staring at them with a focused malice that froze Thomas's blood. Deborah began to walk toward the gate, but for a second Thomas's legs didn't move at all and he could only stare, par

alyzed by horror as the figure began very slowly to crawl to

ward them on thin spidery limbs, hissing as he came. Then Deborah was dragging him backward and he broke into a staggering run after her.

CHAPTER 37

"What was that thing?" said Thomas.

He hadn't asked the question aloud in the three hours they had been talking to the police, but now that the interview was over he finally voiced it.