Cemetery Dance

Chapter 64

They paused,finding themselves in a dim hallway, another door at the far end. A sudden pounding on the door they had just locked pushed them into action. They ran down the hall, but the door at the end was locked. D'Agosta backed up to kick it.

"Wait." A swift manipulation of Pendergast's lockpick and the lock gave way. Again they passed through and Pendergast relocked the door behind them.

They were at the top of a landing, with a wooden staircase leading down into a noisome darkness. Pendergast switched on a penlight, angling it down into the murk.

"That… that man…" D'Agosta panted. "What the hell were they doing? Worshipping him?"

"Perhaps this is not the ideal time for speculation," Pendergast replied.

"I can tell you one thing: that's what attacked me outside the Ville." He could hear pounding on the door at the far end of the hall, the sound of breaking wood.

"After you," said Pendergast, indicating the stairs.

D'Agosta wrinkled his noise. "What other choice do we have?"

"Alas, none." They descended the ancient staircase, the treads groaning loudly under their feet. The staircase ended at a half landing that led to a second staircase, this one of stone, spiraling down into blackness. When at last they reached the bottom, D'Agosta saw that a brick corridor stretched in front of them, damp, heavy with cobwebs and efflorescence. The air smelled of earth and mildew. From behind and above came muffled cries, the sound of fists pounding on wood.

D'Agosta pulled out his own flashlight.

"We need to find stonework matching that in the video," Pendergast said, shining the light along the damp walls. He moved swiftly through the dark, robe trailing behind him.

"Those bastards upstairs are going to be after us in a moment," said D'Agosta.

"They aren't what concerns me," murmured Pendergast. "He is."

They passed beneath several archways and a stone staircase leading upward. Beyond, the tunnel branched, and after brief consideration Pendergast chose the left — hand fork. A moment later they came to a large, circular room, with niches hewn at regular intervals into the walls. Within each niche, human bones were stacked like cordwood, the skulls hung on the long bones. Many still had wisps of hair clinging to the crania by bits of desiccated flesh.

"Charming," muttered D'Agosta.

Pendergast abruptly halted.

Then D'Agosta heard what stopped him: a disjointed shuffling, coming out of the darkness behind them. From beyond his light came a loud, phlegmy sniffing sound, as if of someone testing the air. A shambling tread, growing in speed, moving along an invisible passageway seemingly parallel to their chamber. D'Agosta caught the strong, gamy whiff of horseflesh drifting in the damp air.

"You smell that?"

"Only too well." Pendergast focused his light on a nearby archway, from which the smell seemed to flow on a draft of fresh air.

D'Agosta pulled his Glock, feeling a strong spike of fear despite himself. "That thing is in there. You take the left side, I'll take the right."

Pendergast drew his.45 from beneath his robe and they crept up to the doorway, one on either side.

"Now!" D'Agosta cried.

They spun into the doorway, D'Agosta with his own light held against his gun; within he saw nothing but blank walls of damp brick. Pendergast pointed to the floor, where a series of bloody footprints led off into blackness. D'Agosta knelt and touched one; the blood was so fresh it hadn't even congealed.

D'Agosta rose. "This is fucking weird," he muttered.

"It's also wasting time we don't have. Let us keep moving. Fast."

They backed out of the room and jogged across the open necropolis into a passageway at the far side. It soon opened into another cavern — like space, this one very crude, rough — hewn out of the living rock. They entered and shined their lights around.

"The walls are still unlike the stonework in the video," said Pendergast, sotto voce. "This is schist, not granite, and not cut the same way."

"It's like a maze down here."

Pendergast nodded toward a low archway. "Let's try that passage."

They ducked into the low tunnel. "Jesus, that smell, " said D'Agosta. It was a cloying stench of horse blood, thick, with an edge of iron to it, all the more horrible for its obvious freshness. It was accompanied by occasional eddies of cool air, coming from some invisible vent to the outside. In the distance, echoing through the tunnels, he could hear the cries and shouts of pursuing congregants, who also appeared to have gained the underground and were spreading out, searching for them.

They continued down the tunnel, Pendergast moving so swiftly D'Agosta had to jog to keep up, splashing through standing pools of water and slime. Nitre and cobwebs coated the sweating walls, and as they moved D'Agosta could see white spiders scurrying into holes in the brickwork. At the edge of darkness, red rats' eyes gleamed and flickered at them as they passed.

They approached a junction in which three cross — tunnels met, forming a hexagonally shaped space. Pendergast slowed, putting his finger to his lips and gesturing for D'Agosta to creep along one wall of the tunnel while he took the other.

As they reached the junction, D'Agosta felt, rather than saw, a rapid movement above him. He dropped and rolled to one side just as something — the zombii — creature — dropped down, the tatters of ancient finery whipping and rustling over his knotted limbs like ruined sails in a strong breeze. D'Agosta squeezed off a shot, but the man — thing was ready, and it moved so unexpectedly that his shot went wide. It raced across his field of view, flashing through the beam of his flashlight, and as D'Agosta dropped to the ground to escape the charge a momentary, terrifying impression burned into his retinas: the single lolling eye; the whorls and curlicues ofvévé painted or pasted on his skin; the wet lips quivering in a grin of desperate hilarity. And yet there was nothing vague or hilarious in its movements — it came after them with single — minded, horrifying purpose.