The Eye of Midnight (13 page)

William rose from the barbershop steps and wandered away from the girls into the empty street.

“So now what, Nura?” he asked, turning back toward the stoop. “I thought you said the mirror would lead us to Grandpa.”

“No,” she replied, lowering her eyes. “I only said we had no hope of saving him without it.”

Maxine stiffened. “You can take us to him, though, can't you?” she asked anxiously. “You can find him?”

Nura laid a finger behind a wet pebble and nudged it off the step. “I do not know where he is,” she said.

“Then it was all for nothing!” Maxine cried. “We risked our lives to get the package back, and all we have to show for it is wet clothes and skinned knees. We're no closer to getting out of this fix than we were before.”

“I had hoped that when we found the Eye of Midnight we would find Colonel Battersea as well,” Nura said.

“Well, that's just fine,” said Maxine hollowly. “Only all we turned up was a bunch of gangsters.”

William kicked at a scrap of rusty can in the gutter. “Doesn't that seem a little strange?” he said. “What would Binny and his gang want with a weird old mirror?”

“I cannot say,” answered Nura. “It is an ancient relic, belonging to a different world. It has nothing to do with them.”

“Then why were you bringing the mirror to Grandpa?” asked Maxine. “It has nothing to do with him either, does it?”

“My mother and father sent me to deliver the Eye of Midnight to Colonel Battersea,” replied Nura. “They told me he would know how to help.”

“No offense,” said William, lifting an eyebrow, “but why didn't they just bring it to him themselves? Seems like maybe they shouldn't have sent you off all on your own.”

Nura's face fell. She turned away and tried to master herself, but her lip quivered, and she covered her eyes with her hand. Tears rolled down her cheeks like drops of hot wax.

William winced and scratched the back of his neck, wondering what he had said. “Forget about it, Nura,” he muttered. “I'm sorry I mentioned it.” He shook her shoulder gently. “Things aren't so bad. We got the mirror back, didn't we? All we have to do now is track down Grandpa.” He looked her in the eye and forced a smile. “We'll find him soon. We'll find him and be back at Battersea Manor safe and sound before you know it,” he said, raising two fingers. “Scout's honor.”

It was a reckless promise, of course. Anyone inclined to superstition would be quick to point out that even uttering such a notion aloud was a foolishness, that audacity of this stripe could only ever have ended in catastrophe. In truth, however, there was no indication that William's impertinence played any part in what happened next. Certainly no fateful sign materialized. No black cat or cackling raven appeared. The moon did not darken. In fact, the only omen of impending calamity came in the form of a faint and curious noise.

Nura heard it first. A fading echo on the wet streets, a muffled, indistinguishable sound. She lifted her head and dried her eyes.

“What is it?” asked Maxine.

Nura shook her head and listened, and they all heard it then: a faint growl that rose and fell unpredictably on the breeze. By some trick of the empty, echoing streets, it was difficult to tell where the sound was coming from. Their eyes flitted about the crevices of the city, searching the dim alleys and doorways and balconies that surrounded them.

They thought of diving for cover, but it was too late. All at once the vague growl swelled to a deep rumble. Out of the clotted darkness roared a red motorcycle, and bent low over the handlebars sat a goggled rider in a flapping black coat.

The cycle sped past in a swirling eddy of spray, and William and the girls prayed for the red taillamp to continue on and disappear in the distance, but instead it slowed, and the machine swung in a wide arc, returning to the stoop.

“Salutations, regards, et cetera et cetera,” said the rider with a morose nod, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead.

It was the Pigeon.

“Swallowed your tongues, eh?” he said, watching them closely. “Well, let's hope your legs still work. The Benedetti gang is out here somewhere looking for you, you know.”

“Wh-what happened to them?” asked William. “To Binny and ST?”

“I didn't wait to find out, to be honest. When the bullets start to fly, I make it a habit not to stick around.”

“But you—you work for Binny, don't you?”

“I work for all the gangs in town, kid. I stay alive 'cause I don't get involved. I don't play favorites, and I don't flap my gums. Never took a bribe and never missed a drop. I do know what's what, though, and I know the three of you need to get yourselves out of town. You don't belong here.”

“We can't leave,” said Maxine. “We've got to find our granddad. Somebody grabbed him at the train station.”

The Pigeon tapped one of the gauges between his handlebars. “You mean the old colonel,” he said, and he nodded slyly. “I might know something about that.”

Nura and the cousins stared at him in disbelief.

The Pigeon made a croaking laugh. “Hickory Dickory, plots and trickery!”

“But how?” said Maxine. “How could you—”

“Like I said, Freckles, I do business with all the gangs in town. Nothing happens that I don't hear about.”

Maxine rose from the steps. “Can you take us to him?” she asked.

But the Pigeon stamped his boots and looked away.

“Listen, kid, this is bigger than all of us,” he said. “There's a storm coming. A black cloud stretching out in every direction. So let me give you three a piece of advice. Do yourselves a favor and get out of the city. Nothing here for you but broken bones and tombstones.”

“Please, we have to find him. Can't you at least tell us where he is?” Maxine pleaded.

The Pigeon muttered an oath under his breath.

“Something evil's sleeping underneath these streets,” he said at last, kneading an earlobe restlessly between his thumb and forefinger. “Waiting to devour, and burn, and destroy. It won't stop until it's picking the whole world out of its teeth. If you're hoping to find Granddad, well, then you'll have to enter its lair.”

He hacked and spit on the pavement, as if the words had left a foul taste on his lips.

“There's an old graveyard not far from here—the Knickerbocker Plainsong Cemetery. Inside the dike, look for a passing traveler.”

“Inside the dike…a passing traveler?”

“That's all I got,” said the Pigeon, adjusting his goggles. “You already know more than what's good for you.”

And with that, the Pigeon stood in his seat and gunned the starter with his heel. The cycle roared to life, and he vanished into the night.

Maxine looked up from her map and glanced over her shoulder at William and Nura. The street ended abruptly before them at a tall, wrought-iron gate. A creaking signboard above the entrance indicated their arrival at the Knickerbocker Plainsong Cemetery.

“You're as good as a slobbery old bloodhound, M,” said William.

“Thanks, I think,” Maxine replied uneasily.

A low mist had settled inside the fence—a gauzy veil that clung to every headstone and hollow. Tangled vines groped the arched gateway and the crumbling monuments.

They shuffled through the gate in a skittish cluster, their eyes darting about the brooding shapes of the lonely graveyard.

“Do you see anything?” whispered Nura.

“Plenty,” Maxine replied. “Nothing I like, though.”

“Maybe the Pigeon had it wrong,” said William. “This hardly seems like the kind of place Grandpa would end up.”

Their feet squelched in the sodden earth as they crept between the neglected headstones, and the graves all around seemed to press closer as they went, as if the monuments were not quite rooted to the ground.

William turned and eyed the stones closest to him. “ ‘DeBoer…Van Kiehle…Janssen…,' ” he read. “What kind of names are these?”

“Dutch, I think,” said Maxine. “New York City was founded by Dutch settlers.”

“That's a good sign, I guess—seeing as we're looking for a dike.”

“Dike,”
said Nura. “What does this word mean?”

“I dunno,” said William. “It's some kind of dam, I think. Dutch people are s'posed to be crazy for 'em. I remember a story about a little Dutch boy who plugged a hole in a dike with his finger. I never saw anything like that in a graveyard, though.”

Maxine pushed William forward, and they continued on, hunched low like scavengers on a moonlit battlefield. They reached the back fence of the cemetery but found no ditches, pools, or dikes, only a silent boulevard of decrepit crypts that jutted from the hanging fog. Beyond these the hulking shape of a darkened factory loomed distant in the mist.

“End of the line,” William said to Maxine, conceding defeat. Nura wandered on, though, roaming the long row of the houses of the dead, reading the names inscribed on each.

She stopped at the largest of the crypts. A carved pair of weeping figures guarded the door, their hooded faces bent toward the ground.

She called the cousins with a low whistle, and pointed to the name inscribed on the lintel.

“ ‘Van Dyck,' ” read Maxine.

“That's it, Nura!” cried William with unconcealed admiration. “
Inside the dike…
You found it! This has to be the dike that the Pigeon was talking about!”

“Maybe.” Nura shrugged. “Maybe it is nothing.”

“What now?” asked Maxine.

“We go inside, I guess,” replied William.

Maxine paled. “Into the tomb? But it's sealed shut.”

William stepped up to the door and laid his hands against the stone. A carved skull stared him in the face, grinning above a solemn verse:

“There's a cheerful thought,” he muttered.

He gave the door a halfhearted push, expecting frozen resistance, but to his surprise, it swung open easily.

Maxine and Nura clutched the back of his jacket, peering over his shoulder.

“What do you see?” asked Nura.

“I can't make out a thing. It's pitch-dark in there.”

The inside of the crypt was indeed as black as a cannon bore. William fumbled in his pocket for the box of matches he had been carrying ever since they left the manor. He fished it out and labored to strike a light in the damp air, but soon the flame popped and flared. Three pulses fluttered weakly as the children clutched their hands to their mouths and shuffled one by one through the doorway.

The air inside the tomb was musty and stale. A layer of grit dusted the floor, crunching underfoot as they went, and William's flame revealed two rows of stone coffins separated by a narrow aisle.

“You don't think Grandpa is…,” said William, laying his hand on one of the rectangular boxes, “I mean, he can't be—”

“Shush,” said Maxine. “There's something carved on the lids.”

William held the flame close to the top of the nearest sarcophagus, and then to its matching twin across the aisle.

“It's some sort of riddle,” said Maxine, studying the lids. “Questions on one side, answers on the other.”

The match burned low, singeing William's finger, and he dropped it with a yowl. The girls heard scrabbling in the dark, and then a sharp scratch followed by another yellow flame. They continued down the aisle slowly, reading the lines aloud.

They reached the back of the crypt and leaned over the final pair of coffins.

What is man?

The flame sputtered and went out.

“ ‘What is man?' ” said Nura, prodding William in the back.

“Hold on,” he said. “I have to find another match.”

He struck the light, sheltering it with his hand as it writhed and twisted, and the three of them bent their heads close over the stone slab.

Nura gasped in surprise, and the weak flame flickered, then went out. The crypt was pitched into utter blackness.

“I hate it in here,” muttered Maxine, a mounting terror creeping up her back like a spider under her clothes. She clawed at the buttons on her jacket, which all at once seemed suffocating. “Light another match, Will!”

“That was the last one,” he replied shakily.

“The door shut behind us!” Maxine cried, realizing all at once how foolish they had been. She fumbled her way back toward the entrance.

“We're trapped!” she said. “I can't find a handle!”

A voice spoke up in the dark. It belonged to Nura, but the sound of it was cold and strange.

“The way out lies below us,” she said. “Beneath the tomb of the passing traveler, just as the Pigeon told us.”

“What? You mean we have to open up this box?” asked William.

“Of course not!” Maxine burst out. “That's ridiculous!”

But Nura and William had already found the edge of the lid, and in the darkness Maxine could hear them straining to shift it.

“Well, don't just stand there, M,” said William. “Give us a hand.”

They all leaned hard against the weight of the lid, and there was a dull grinding sound, a rumble as deep as the planets turning on their axes. The stone slab slid back, and an orange light erupted from the box. Eerie shadows danced hugely on the ceiling of the crypt, and their three faces were cast with a lurid glare as they peered into the tomb. A narrow shaft sank into the ground, empty except for a wooden ladder and a hissing torch lit with a bright flame that fluttered and swayed in the depths below.

They stared down into the pit, their expressions as somber as the figures carved on the outside of the crypt.

William cleared his throat nervously. “Who's first?” he asked.