Root (36 page)

“
There goes Harvald,” said Lille as
Luther’s lieutenant came lurching out of a dim room. He passed
through the vestibule, with yet another pack of six Dobermans
trotting at his heels.

“
Jesus,” I said. “Just what we need.
More dogs.”

“
Do you think Luther’s even here?”
said Lille.

“
Harvald would know,” said Bern.
“Shall I—?”

“
I’ll go see,” I said bounding
up.

“
No, James. You
shouldn’t—”

Bern tried to restrain me but I slithered past
him, heading for the room from which Harvald had
emerged.

Luther had expended an enormous amount of
effort in ornamenting his chapel. Nature and garden themes abounded
in carvings, frescoes and statues lining every wall and niche.
There were grape vine motifs twining everywhere, pine boughs with
jays perched, leaves bearing ladybugs and dragonflies and
scarabs.

The door to Harvald’s room was unlocked, a
welcome change from all the solidified doors and immovable I had
been encountering. At least I wouldn’t have to burrow through this
one.

I glanced back at Bern and Lille, they were
still kneeling at the pew, arguing in whispers until Lille rose and
came after me. Bern rolled his eyes and followed.

I pushed the door open and found inside a
good-sized room with simple furnishings: a wash basin, a table and
an armchair looking over a mirror. The wall was decorated with
blurry photographs of the same woman, various ages, with and
without children.

An assortment of chain mail hung from crude
hooks on the wall, along with a leather greatcoat. Halberds and
maces protruded from a barrel like some deadly iron
bouquet.

The room had a back door that opened into a
cavernous chamber—a dome like Karla’s, but much larger. The wall
encircling the immaculate marble floor was punctured by eleven
other entryways spaced like the hours on a clock face. The floor
was cluttered with heaps of contraptions and what looked like
sculptures of animals and people.

Bern came up behind me, breathless. “James,
you really shouldn’t be in here. If Luther finds you …. Oh, my God!
What’s this?”

Lille squeezed around us for a better look.
“That Luther may not have the best taste … but he sure knows how to
hollow out a patch of roots.”

“
It’s like a ballroom in here,” said
Bern, forgetting his admonitions and entering.

“
Luther has no sense of interior
architecture,” said Lille. “Why would he tuck a ballroom behind his
caretaker’s quarters? And why is it so cluttered?”

“
It’s not a ballroom, it’s his work
shop. James, Lille, come look, this is amazing,” said Bern, poking
around through the heaps.

“
Oh! His weavings,” said Lille. “How
grotesque!”

I came up behind her. There was an inert
beagle lying on its side—not dead, because it wasn’t clear it had
ever lived. It seemed to represent one of Luther’s earlier attempts
at dog creation. Apart from the supernumerary canine teeth
protruding from its jaw and unfinished paws that ended in a splay
of roots like a witch’s broom, it was anatomically, quite
perfect.

Elsewhere among the heaps were stacks of gold
bullion and Euro notes, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a
side-car and piles of oversized and disembodied wings—of
dragonflies, iridescent hummingbirds and snowy white
swans.

“
Oh! Bern, dear! Look! Bed sheets …
and an actual down comforter. You don’t suppose Master Luther would
mind if we borrowed some of his linens?”

Bern had his hands on his hips and was looking
about the chamber, clearly discomfited. “Something’s not right
here. The security’s awful lax. Don’t you think? I smell a
trap.”

“
Oh, calm down Bernard! Luther’s
simply put his faith in his walls and his dogs. For a man of his
talents, you know how he can be such a schlub
sometimes.”

A pair of dachshunds came dashing across the
floor, their yapping turning to happy wags as Lille crouched down
to greet them with some high-pitched baby talk.

“
What lovely pups you are! Oh, yes!
Such pretty babies!”

“
I hope to hell these mutts don’t
talk,” said Bern. “I don’t think I could handle it.”

I peeked into one of the dimly lit rooms
ringing the main chamber. Rows of folding seats staggered in
terraces to a curtained stage the size of a boardroom table. It was
a tiny theater with seating for twenty or so.

“
Ho ho ho! What do we have here?”
said Bern, as he opened the door to the next room down the arc—at
ten o’clock if Harvald’s room was high noon. Treacly, tinkling
music spilled out under the dome.

“
Oh, my Lord!” said Lille, joining
him. I rushed over to see what had alarmed her.

Entering that room was like walking into a
snow globe. Little, animatronic ice skaters glided over a frozen
pond surrounded by fir trees, holly bushes and ranks of
creepy-faced nutcrackers peering from nooks in the wall like fans
in the stands of a hockey rink. Fluffy, white flakes fluttered down
on the scene from the blacked-out ceiling while a model steam
engine puffed around the periphery, boxcars bulging with candied
treats.

“
It’s like … an entire Bavarian
Weihnachten exploded in here,” said Lille.

A perfect snowflake landed on my wrist, but
didn’t melt. Another landed beside it and was an exact replica of
the first.

All that jingle, jangle overwhelmed me. I had
to get out of there. Lille and Bern had already fled back to the
main chamber.

“
Yoo-hoo! Luther!” called
Lille.

“
I doubt he’s around,” I said. “He
would have found us by now.”

“
Can’t say I’m disappointed,” said
Bern.

I ducked into the next room and cringed. It
was a perfect replica of a hospital suite. It even smelled faintly
of antiseptic and bedpans. Two bags of IV fluid hung from a chromed
metal stand along yards of clear plastic tubing. I couldn’t help
thinking of Mom’s last days.

The bed was empty, but a monitor nevertheless
displayed an EKG graph frozen in time. Every item in the room was
exquisitely detailed, down to the electrical specs and serial
numbers on all the equipment.

A lunch tray rested on a fold-out
table along with the hospital’s daily bulletin containing news of
the day and a menu
.
The logo in top corner depicted a ladybug on a mulberry leaf
and was labeled:

‘
EMS La Coccinelle SA.’

I picked it up and tried to read the blurb
underneath, but it was all in French. Only one in ten words was
decipherable to me:

‘
Un havre de paix depuis 1958 pour
44 résidants. Un lieu de bien-être et de vie agreeable. Notre
Fondatrice et Directrice Martin Devereaux avec son équipe dévouée
vous accueille avec professionnalisme et chaleur humaine dans une
ambiance familial.
’

I went to the window and looked out at a
diorama backed by a matte painting. The scene depicted sloping
fields and a long, narrow lake in the distance, with the rooftops
of a city immediately below. It reminded me of the landscapes in
some of Karla’s tapestries. A chill spread down my back.

Bern rushed to the door. “Quick! Someone’s
coming!”

***

I stuffed the hospital newsletter into my
shirt and dashed out. Lille stood in the doorway of the little
theatre, dachshunds at her side, waving for us to hurry. Drawers
slammed. Someone hummed a ditty in Harvald’s anteroom.

Bern grabbed my wrist and pulled me along
pulled me along down the stairs, onto the stage and behind the
curtain. The dachshunds remained at the door, yapping and growling
as the curtain swooshed and swung.

“
Those little turncoats!” said
Lille. “As if we had never made their acquaintance.”

The humming ceased. Footsteps echoed under the
dome. Harvald appeared at the door, looking wary. I held my breath.
He lingered for a time, peering into the dimness before moving
away, taking the dachshunds with him.

“
There’s another door behind us,”
whispered Bern.

He squeaked it open, revealing a narrow
passageway illuminated by dim footlights. We scurried out into a
long, curving corridor that seemed to follow the outermost edge of
the dome.

“
Chapel’s this way,” said Bern,
heading towards a rectangle of light.

“
Who’s there?” Harvald’s voice
boomed. His silhouette filled the rectangle at the end of the
corridor.

We pressed ourselves into a shallow niche in
the outer wall. Harvald clopped into the passage with his heavy,
plodding gait. We squeezed in tight, flattening ourselves against
the wall.

“
No one move,” said Bern.

That feeling was welling up in me
again—righteous anger mingled with impatience and annoyance. I
found a patch of wall to take out my frustrations on and went to
work.

Harvald touched his hand to the stone and a
diffuse glow spread out from his fingers and sped down the
corridor.

The soft glow was enough to cast our three
shadows against the inner wall.

“
Bloody hell!” said Bern.

“
Show yourselves!” Harvard shouted,
his command echoing around the arc.

“
It’s no use,” said Lille. “He knows
we’re here.”

We stepped out into the corridor.

“
What are you doing
here?”

“
Oh, um … hello Harvald,” said Bern.
“Lille and I were praying in the chapel and—“

“
You two? Pray?”

“
Well, yes. Why not? But we got
turned around and I thought this might be an alternative exit and …
well it’s all my fault we ended up here. I’m so sorry.”

“
This corridor is forbidden. You
have sinned. Now you must pay.”

He whistled and there came the sound of claws
clambering for purchase on the slick stone. An army of dogs came
charging into the chapel, baying in unison.

“
Oh my,” said Lille. “Those ones
don’t sound like dachshunds.”

“
Shall we … flee?” said
Bern.

“
It’s no use,” said Lille. “I can’t
outrun a Shepherd dog.”

“
Doesn’t mean you need to stay put,
James. You’ve got young legs. Go!”

But I kept my attention homed in on that one
patch of wall. Flakes began to curl and peel. Strands unwound and
frayed.

“
Lille, the boy’s onto something
here!” Bern said, with a warble of excitement.

But then a numbness started to spread down my
fingers. I glanced at my hand. My fingers had no tips. Streaks of
translucency crept up my arm. “Crap! I’m fading.”

“
Oh! Well, look at that, I suppose
you are. Lucky chap. Leads us into trouble and leaves us in the
lurch.”

“
Don’t begrudge the boy, Bern,” said
Lille. “Just bless his good luck.”

I scrambled to give that hospital newsletter
one more glance before I disappeared. There was an address block in
the top corner, but I was too flustered to make sense of all the
French verbiage. I couldn’t even tell which words corresponded to a
city or country. I couldn’t even know for sure if it came from
France. It could just as well be from Belgium or Quebec.

“
I’m so sorry,” I said, as my fibers
and particles became sparser and sparser.

“
No worries, lad. What’s the worst
they could do to us?” said Bern.

“
Turn us into mince meat,” said
Lille, wincing, as the hounds turned the corner and bounded down
the corridor in lockstep.

Bern took her into his arms as my head spun
with the sensation of being sucked up the core of a
tornado.

Chapter 32:
Marching

“
Sursum corda!” chanted the priest
and the people all around me chanted right back.

My consciousness rejoined my earthly form in
the middle of a Latin mass, during the breaking of the bread
thing—the Eucharist—I guess. Mom tried to teach me some religion,
but her heart wasn’t into it, so it never took hold. Sounds like
I’m blaming her, but I’m not. Whatever faith she could have
imparted would have been torn to shreds by what I had witnessed in
Root.

Had I seen evidence of a higher
power?

Probably.

Was this higher power worthy of
worship?

Fear? Respect? Certainly. Worship? Not from
what I had seen.

And I’m not talking about Luther. His soul was
just a pawn like the rest of our souls. I’m talking about the raw
material of Root itself, the Reapers and whoever made them. Evil
could be the only word that described them.

My first reaction at being back in the pews of
St. Peter’s was sheer horror. Lille’s screams still reverberated in
my ears. One more minute working on that wall and I could have
helped Bern and Lille make a clean get away from those dogs.
Luthersburg had gone from quaint and curious to Nazi nightmare in
the span of three visits. I couldn’t blame them for wanting out.
Luther might not be Hitler, but he was a fool and a dangerous one
at that.