Part 27 (2/2)

”That's Hammond?”

There were prisons within prisons, Ruddik had said. I was stunned by the thought that Hammond had been returned to Ditmarsh. Maybe Hammond shot himself. Maybe someone shot him. And when he was helpless and harmless and they had no other place to put him, they brought him back and abandoned him to a mute and solitary existence, his ident.i.ty obliterated.

”I didn't know it was Hammond. I had no idea until now. But Crowley spent a lot of time with him,” Josh said. ”I didn't like to go near. Roy knew I was right. As soon as I told them.”

The darkness around us. We were two voices and no physical bodies. We might have been talking on the telephone.

”What about Brother Mike?” I asked. ”What did they do with him?”

I heard Josh s.h.i.+ft, and then his voice came from lower than before, closer to the ground.

”They took him,” he said, almost a whisper. ”I asked them not to. I should have made a better deal.”

”Why did they put you down here?”

He didn't answer, and I got used to the silence again.

”I'm cold,” he complained, and the voice came from far away.

I'd like to say that my response was immediate, that I slid over to my rescuer with the little strength I could still summon and lay down beside him, that I put my arms around him and shared my warmth. I'd like to say that the impulse was natural and human and immediate, but it wasn't. I let him lay there alone for a long, long time.

His breathing became my stumbling metronome. When the metronome faltered, I waited for it to begin again, and I started to cry. I willed myself away from the wall and over to him. I found his form on the ground, lying on his back, and I stretched out beside him on the hard, damp stone. At first I put my hand on his chest; then I touched his forehead and his face, and rested my hand on his forearm, my mouth next to his ear. When he twitched, I slid my hand down further and grasped his hand in mine and imagined a little clench.

”I feel very close to him now,” he said.

The words startled me. Did he mean Crowley, or did he mean his father? Someone on the other side. I had the feeling that there were explanations lingering inside him. You could call them confessions, or you could call them ghosts. Thoughts, hopes, regrets, things he wanted to release by telling me but couldn't any longer because he had slipped off. So instead of listening to those things, I told him it was going to be okay.

What was it like to die? Were you alone with your infinite thoughts and memories, a sense of greater existence, or did you feel the presence of others close to you? Was it enough to feel that presence, or did the overwhelming desire to reach someone cause you pain? Was that what eternal peace meant-an untethering, a drifting away from the pain of love, an understanding of its boundless power?

I heard the footsteps and the voice calling out, and I wondered, with a terrified tensing up of my stiff body, who it could be.

”Kali?” the voice called. ”Kali, are you in here?”

The footsteps came closer. Keeper Wallace was calling my name. My eyes had become used to the darkness. When the door moved, I saw him standing there, filling its opening. He had a rifle in his hands and he was alone. The rifle clattered to the stones. He bent, his arms came under my back, and I felt myself rising up.

”Put your arms around my neck.”

I hung my arms around his neck.

We climbed the stairs, my body rising up into the blinding light.

”Josh,” I said. ”We need to bring Josh.”

”It's okay,” Wallace said. ”We'll get him later.”

It took me seconds to blink my vision back. I saw Stone lying on the floor, a tangle of pink laundry on his chest. I saw Cutler sitting against the wall. The brightness of morning outside, but more dazzling than that. Flooded by fire hoses, Ditmarsh had become a castle made of ice. The floor of the hub covered in a translucent lava. Some of the beams and bars and railings dripping with the same opaque, stiffened candle wax, and all of it glittered in the first sunlight. I'd never seen it so brilliant.

I saw soldiers moving toward us slowly, spread out in formation, rifles in that familiar angled point, carefully walking the ice.

49.

The same country road, the same rutted turnoff into the woods. Though most of the snow was gone, the trees and bushes were still skeletal. I tried to imagine a verdant burst of spring, the tangle of green choking the path, hiding the way. I wanted to see Brother Mike's house in the woods turn into something from a fairy tale, a place to dwell forever.

There was nothing but stillness when I pulled into the yard. I got out of the Land Rover and climbed the steps of the porch. I did not like the quiet, and I felt anxious rapping on the door. There was no answer. I turned the k.n.o.b and pushed. The door stuck on the floor and then pried free. I called out and heard his voice answer weakly from within.

I had hoped for tea, even for one of those cookies, but he was in no condition for hosting. He'd described it on the phone as his ”bad state” when I'd called to check on him. I saw the evidence now. The air in the room was slightly sour. He looked sallow, unhealthy. I guessed that he'd eaten very little. I said h.e.l.lo and sat down across from him.

”How are you?” he finally asked.

”Better,” I said. And though it was a lie, I knew by now that the lie was going to become true. Eventually I would be better, maybe even whole. I still felt shame and grief and anger and fear, but the emotions were no longer as corrosive. I did not wake up every night and stare at the ceiling with my heart thudding in my chest. It stopped happening when I realized that Josh was with me. I felt very close to him now that he was dead. That still bothered me. It wasn't an easy or a comforting thought, to know I was linked to him forever, but it had become my reality.

”I'm very glad,” he said, and added, ”I'm still struggling.”

There were many questions I wanted to ask him, but I did not know how to begin. Would the answers cause him more pain? I knew that whatever was eroding him had something to do with his basic beliefs. My own beliefs were flimsy and flexible. They could be reshaped. I was already molding them to make sense of things I would never have believed months before. But the impact on him was heavier than that, more structural. Some fundamental aspect of his universe had collapsed, and life in the aftermath was a difficult adjustment.

”I have a task,” he said, ”that I've been putting off for some time. I'm wondering, since you're here, if you would help me take care of it?”

The way he said it, it could have been a drain that needed snaking or a will that needed a witness's signature.

”Of course,” I said.

That seemed to liven him slightly. He stood up stiffly, as though bothered by chronic pain, and walked into the kitchen. I followed. At the back porch, he found a large hammer and asked me to carry it.

We put on boots and crossed the backyard to the kiln.

”I'm having some difficulty bending over,” he said. ”So I was wondering if you would crawl in there for me and retrieve the pieces of pottery that are inside. It will be dirty work, I'm afraid.”

”Sure,” I said.

I lifted the tarp that covered the entrance. Still dark in there, but no longer as warm.

”Do you have a flashlight back at the house?” I asked. ”I might trip and break something.”

”Don't worry about it,” he answered.

There was no arguing. I hunched over and made my way inside.

My eyesight adjusted to the darkness. I did not realize until I was standing inside that a closed dark s.p.a.ce would bring back the anxieties. I felt a little bite of fear on the back of my neck, and my heart rate became more rapid. But that was then, and this was different. I saw the bowls and vases and cups along the shelves. They were cold to the touch. I took a vase in each hand and headed back down the tunnel. At this rate it would take me a very long time indeed to retrieve each precious item.

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