The Memorist

Chapter 78

Thursday, May 1^st-11:26 a.m.

Wipers swept back and forth on the taxi’s windshield, sluicing away the steady rain. Meer’s hands were clasped together so tightly she hurt herself. Nothing about the trip so far felt familiar until the driver turned the corner on to Engerthstrasse and up ahead, through the rain, she saw the stone columns of the Toller Archäologiegesellschaft.

Walking up the steps to the Memorist Society’s building, she saw a bright yellow sign affixed to the gate-it showed the symbol of a door with a large X through it. Despite the obvious do not enter warning and the fact that the Society didn’t open till after noon, Meer pressed the doorbell.

Thirty seconds passed. She pounded on the door. Sixty. She rang the bell again. Ninety seconds. Leaving her finger on the buzzer, Meer wondered how Sebastian knew where her father was. And why had Jeremy left the hospital if he needed a procedure? Would she and Sebastian find him in time? Her mind had been churning the same questions since she’d run out of the hotel.

Why wasn’t someone answering the door?

Suddenly a sickening thought occurred to her: she didn’t know Sebastian’s handwriting. Maybe the note wasn’t from him at all. What if the people who attacked her in the woods and knocked Sebastian out, who were probably responsible for stealing the Beethoven letter and the gaming box and for Ruth’s and Dr. Smettering’s deaths, were behind this ruse too? Maybe they had Sebastian and her father and the flute.

A creaking hinge alerted her as the door opened quickly, and before she could protest or look to see who it was an arm reached out and grabbed her, pulling her inside into a dark, shadowy foyer.

“Thank God it’s you. Is my father here?” she blurted out as soon as she saw that it was Sebastian.

“Yes.”

“Is he all right?”

“Yes, I’ll take you to him.”

Meer was skeptical.

“You’re sure he’s all right.”

“Meer, he’s fine. I promise.” He looked right at her and she felt safe and then instantly frightened as if she were hearing two different beats, one in each ear.

“He’s this way.” He gestured to the gloomy interior and she followed him inside.

“The flute’s missing, Sebastian. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all? Yes?”

As they passed into the main room where it was even darker, Meer’s anxiety increased. The first time she’d come here with her father she’d had a toxic reaction; the air was rife with affliction and tragedy on Monday and it was worse today, so thick she thought she might choke on it.

“The flute’s safe. I’d never let anything happen to it.” His words echoed along with their footsteps on the marble floor.

“I don’t understand…why did you take it? And why did you leave without telling me?”

“There was no time to waste. I’m sorry about this. About everything.” There was so much pathos in his voice it broke through the alarm she was feeling.

As they left the inner sanctum and kept walking, Meer asked him why there was a no-entry sign outside the building.

“The majordomo received a call this morning that there might be a gas leak in the sub-basement so he alerted the staff and told them not to come in until notified.”

“There’s a gas leak and my father’s here?”

“I told you, he’s fine.”

They’d reached a large oak door that Sebastian held open for her. Stepping into the book-lined library she spun around, looking for Jeremy but saw only empty chairs, yards of carved wooden shelves, intricately patterned carpets, a suite of stained-glass windows.

“Where is he?”

“This way.” In the corner he flung open another door, revealing a small walk-in closet. Cartons were stacked at one end, double shelves lined the opposite wall. As he reached out Meer knew even before he did it that he was reaching for a hidden handle, and when a section of the wall swung out, she rushed to the access and looked down into a gaping black hole, smelling a surge of damp, dank air.

She knew this place. Remembering the cloaked entrance and the details of what lay beyond it, she was lost for a minute between now and then and tried to grab hold of a tangible memory.

“We’re going down into the catacombs, aren’t we? Why?”

“All the Society’s valuables are down there…all the historical papers,” he explained as he pulled a cord illuminating a deep descending spiral staircase and she hurried down the same staircase she’d seen in a memory lurch. Meer’s shivering started with sudden intensity and she had to put her finger between her teeth to stop them from chattering. Remaining in the present was urgent; she couldn’t allow memory to overtake her now.

Eight, nine, she couldn’t keep herself from counting the steps. Eleven, twelve…there were going to be fifteen steps, she thought, and yes, the fifteenth step was the last.

Sebastian flicked another switch. Weak light showed the way through a twisting tunnel. Hearing rustling, she spun around.

“Just mice, they scamper when they hear movement,” he said. “It’s not much farther, I promise.” The kindness and sympathy in his voice reached out to comfort her, but nothing except seeing her father would alleviate her anxiety.

Proceeding through the low-ceilinged passageway, she noticed niches carved into the stone walls, each containing a dusty skeleton but she wasn’t shocked. She remembered them, anticipated them, from Margaux’s journey down here. They’d looked at her with their eyeless, unwelcoming stares before.

Up ahead she saw footprints in the dirt. Three sets. Not all were going in the same direction. She remembered, from that distant morass of confused images and ideas, that there was an exit down here.

“Be careful you don’t slip, it’s muddy,” Sebastian said considerately, altering the distance between centuries. “We’re here,” he announced as they came around a last turn.

The vault room, barricaded like a prison cell with iron bars, stood at the end of this hallway. Inside a bare bulb descended from an ugly black cord that twisted down like a snake hanging from the ceiling and shed its harsh light on her father, sitting on the floor, his back up against the wall.