The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER NINE

Wally was the superstitious sort, and although he was always glad to have a little extra money for overtime, he wasn’t eager to spend too much time in the museum after dark. There were too many life-size sculptures standing around on pedestals, and he always had the feeling that they only stopped moving the second he looked at them. Even the shadows in the galleries seemed like they didn’t belong where they were. But when he’d received word, straight from President Dodds’s office, to stay however long was needed to clean up the refuse left in the conservation wing, he couldn’t very well say no. All afternoon, he’d heard the sounds of crates being ripped apart, floorboards being replaced, nails being hammered, and he didn’t know what to expect when he finally did turn on the overhead lights.

Still, it wasn’t this. The whole vast room blazed with twice the light it had had before; an entirely new bank of lights had been installed on the ceiling, up between the clerestory windows, and their beams were all trained on the center of the floor. There, all the easels and worktables that had previously cluttered the space had been shoved aside in order to make room for a raised platform made of reinforced steel and large enough to accommodate a Cadillac.

But that was no car on display.

It was a long box, like a coffin, but with a kind of peaked roof. It was made of white stone, and even from the doorway, he could see that there were images carved into its lid and sides.

If he’d had the willies before, he had them in spades now.

But he had his orders, and he could see that the workmen had left him plenty to do. There was sawdust all over the floor, and a pile of broken floorboards and pieces of what looked like a shipping crate were all piled up as if ready for a bonfire. Either the workers had been too lazy to clean up after themselves, or they’d wanted to get away from the damn thing as much as he did.

Unlocking the utility closet, he backed out the wheelbarrow, and, carefully averting his eyes from the coffin — or whatever the hell it was — started tossing the broken lumber, bent nails, and used excelsior into it. Even the floor was gummy, though, with something white and viscous. Nuts, he thought. It was going to take some elbow grease to get that crap off the floor.

After five or six trips to the refuse bins outside, he’d pretty much cleared away most of the trash. Stopping to catch a breath of the fresh night air, he happened to notice that one of the clerestory windows had been cracked open, and a sliver of light was gilding the tree branches. It looked a little like snow. Winter would be coming soon enough. For now, however, the air was simply cool and invigorating.

How they’d opened that window, without using the ladder and hooked pole still stashed in the closet, puzzled him. Closing it again was just one more thing he’d have to do before leaving for the night. God forbid it should rain.

Going back into the utility closet, he filled a bucket with hot water and ammonia. Whatever that gooey stuff on the floorboards was, it was sticking to his shoes, and it was sure to be a bitch to get off. Maybe it was some kind of glue they’d used in affixing the new boards. They sure as hell could have been more careful with it.

In fact, as he sloshed some water around and began working the mop, there seemed to be more of it around than there had been earlier. Was it seeping up again through the cracks? He stopped and bent over to see if the boards hadn’t been aligned snugly enough, when another spot of it suddenly plopped down in front of him.

From above.

And then another — wet and slick as whitewash — splatted on the shoulder of his gray work shirt.

Shielding his eyes from the glare of the new lights, he looked up at the rafters of the room and saw something that looked like a little brown bird flit from one beam to another.

But then he heard the chittering, and he knew it wasn’t birds up there. It was bats.

Good God. Now he could see that it wasn’t just one or two, but dozens of them, some hanging upside down from the rafters, others spreading their leathery wings and looking for a perch of their own.

Damn — that’s what happened when you left a window open, even a crack. Getting them out was going to be a nightmare.

And what if they wound up soiling this stone box on the platform? Considering all the trouble that had been gone to in installing the thing, it had to be awfully valuable, and Wally sure as shootin’ didn’t want any blame landing on his head if it got damaged. Bat droppings were highly acidic and would eat through anything. He’d seen what they’d done to the lawn furniture at the president’s house.

Rummaging around in the closet, he found an old tarp that the painters had used the last time they’d touched up the trim in the galleries, dragged it out, and hauled it across the floor toward the chest. The bats were getting louder, and flitting back and forth. There was a corrugated metal ramp on one side of the platform, which must have been used to slide the box up and into place, but as Wally stepped onto it, a bat suddenly swooped down and whizzed over his head, so close he could swear that the tips of its wings had grazed his hair.

“God damn,” he muttered, ducking down. Weren’t bats supposed to have some kind of radar that kept them from bumping into things, much less people?

But he had no sooner straightened up to drape the tarp over the chest — the quicker he could get it covered, the quicker he could get out of there and leave the problem for the exterminators to solve — than another one dive-bombed him. This time its tiny claws actually snagged his sleeve before zooming away.

These bats were crazy! Maybe rabid. Wally threw the tarp over the top of the coffin, and without even looking to see where it landed, he whipped around to head for the exit. But his foot slipped on the guano, and he went down hard, cracking his forehead on the edge of the steel platform. Another bat shot down and nipped at his cheek, so fast that it was gone again before he even felt the blood dribbling down his skin. Stumbling to his feet, he knocked over the bucket, and a tide of hot water and ammonia spilled across the floor. Splashing through it, he covered his head with his arms and raced out into the galleries, but a flock of bats whirled around him, snatching at his clothes, his hair, his fingers.

Barely able to see where he was going, he just shoved the museum doors open with his shoulder, setting off an alarm, and staggered onto the forecourt, swinging his arms and looking for cover. He ran for the trees of Prospect Garden, where lanterns burned bright above the porte-cochere of the president’s house. He would have screamed, but he was afraid to open his mouth for fear a bat might fly in there, too! His wet shoes crunched on the gravel, and his breath was hoarse in his throat. If he could just get into the house… but the bats were swarming all over him, like flies on dead meat, and no matter how hard he tried to fend them off, wheeling his arms, even plucking some from his shoulders and flinging them aside, there were always more — and they were relentless.

He never saw the rock he tripped over, but somehow he flipped in midair and landed flat on his back. The air slammed out of his lungs and the bats came down on him like a hard brown rain, wings spread, claws distended, tiny fangs shining.

Minutes later, their work done, they rose again and spun off above the treetops of the garden, toward the gleaming white belfry of Nassau Hall, over the top of FitzRandolph Gate, and then down the moonlit, sleeping streets of the town, like heralds proclaiming the arrival of their king.