Nevermore (25 page)

Dean rolled his eyes. That was Sam all over, trying to find the silver lining. Recalling how Aldo had been all skittish when he first mentioned Roxy, Dean had no trouble believing that he was hiding something. Besides, they’d been thinking all along that Aldo knew what happened to her and wasn’t telling.

“Of course,” Sam added, “if it
was
an accident, he should’ve reported it.”

“Nah, he wouldn’t’ve.” Manfred swigged his beer. “Look, I don’t buy for a second that Aldo did nothin’ wrong, and I can’t see him killin’ nobody, but—well, if it
was
an accident, he wouldn’t’a called no fuzz, I’ll tell you that for free. Ain’t Al-do’s style, y’know?”

“Hang on,” Sam said, “maybe we shouldn’t go digging up the yard.”

Dean looked at his brother like he was crazy.

“Exsqueeze me?”

“I’m saying, we shouldn’t guess. We don’t know for sure the body’s there, and if it is, we don’t know where exactly, and even if we do find it, then what?”

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“Then we salt it and burn it and—”

“And whoever killed her goes free, ’cause we’ll have burned the evidence.”

That brought Dean up short.

Sam went on. “We always talk about how spirits are out for vengeance, and that may be the case here, but what if she’s just out for justice, like that spirit down in Baltimore?”

“That was a death omen,” Dean said.

But Sam was on a roll. “Yeah, but she was mainly there to mete out justice. I don’t think salt-ing and burning will do the trick. I mean, yeah, it’ll get rid of the spirit, but it won’t bring whoever killed her to light.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dean said, shaking his head.

Sam frowned. “Believe what?”

“That you actually said, ‘mete out justice.’ Dude, people don’t
talk
like that.” Manfred nodded. “He’s right, Sam, that was some seriously whacked-out phrase-turning, there.”

“Whatever—I’m right, aren’t I?”

Dean sighed. Every instinct he had said that they should find the body and salt and burn it, because, dammit, that was what you
did
with spirits who haunted people’s houses.

But if they did that, Aldo got away with murder.

And that just did not sit right with him.

260 SUPERNATURAL

“All right, so what do we do, genius? Use a rubber hose on Aldo?”

Sam smiled in a manner that made Dean distinctly nervous. “Not quite.”

It had been the preparation work that was the most diffi cult, really.

In order for the sigil to be properly traced, he had to commit each of the moon- based rituals in a partic u lar spot. Luckily, the margin for error on that spot was wide enough that he had options.

For example, he just needed one of the apartments in that building on 199th Street to be empty, and one was. He was even more fortunate with the house on Webb Avenue. He would’ve settled for finding an abandoned apartment in that area as well, but it worked so much better with a basement.

That was how he knew his cause was just. The fates had laid things out for him perfectly, made it easy for him to accomplish his work.

All he had left was the fi nal stage, and still with five days to prepare. This, he felt, would be the easiest of them.

He was standing now at the corner of Fordham Road and University Avenue—or, as it was called now, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard—looking up at the two towers of the Church of St. Nicholas Nevermore

261

of Tolentine. Both towers had bells, which rang out at the appropriate times on Sundays.

It will ring out next Tuesday as well.
His heart pounded with anticipation. Finally, that would be it.

He hadn’t gone back to the other place. For all he knew, the police had found the remains of poor Sarah Lowrance. She was a perfectly nice woman, and he was sure that she might have lived a long happy life otherwise. But she was serving a greater purpose now, and perhaps in the fullness of time, when people understood what, exactly, he was doing, her name would be immortalized, along with those of Marc Reyes, those two students, and his victim the following

Tuesday—and himself, of

course, in showing the world the glories of magicks.

When he thought about it, of course, he knew better. After all, the world didn’t appreciate Percival Samuels’s genius, and he had lived in a time that was far more accepting of the world of the oc-cult than the modern world, with its websites and fax machines and cell phones and iPods and e-mails and all the other scientifi c nonsense that got in the way of learning.

But it didn’t matter. Because he would bring Poe back, back to a world that would appreciate his genius, back to a world where he could tell them the
truth
.

That was all that mattered. What were the lives 262 SUPERNATURAL

of Marc Reyes and Sarah Lowrance and those two students compared to that?

Not to mention whoever he got for the fi nal ritual.

Technically, he didn’t need a person for the fi nal portion. There was a bell tower on the site of the fourth and final sigil, and that meant he simply needed to re-create “The Bells.”

The question, of course, was how. He thought back over the lyrics, much of which was the repetition of the word “bells.” Poe had a gift for rhythm and onomotopoeia that so many of his fellow American poets lacked. Reading “The Bells” felt like you were amidst the “clamor and the clangor,” able to feel the bells’ tintinnabulation as you read it aloud.

In par tic u lar, he thought of the needs of the ritual. He had chosen “The Cask of Amontillado,”

“The Murders on the Rue Morgue,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” in part because all three involved corpses, and he knew from his studies that the strongest rituals involved the taking of a life, and a human life was stronger than that of an animal.

But “The Bells” had no such death.

Then he recalled one stanza:

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the
fi re,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and
frantic fi re,

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263

Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor,

Now—now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.

And another:

And his merry bosom swells

With the paean of the bells!

And he dances, and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the paean of the bells

Of the bells.

Yes! That was it. He would find a victim and set him alight even as he rang the bells. A burning human would certainly dance and yell, and his or her bosom would swell in an attempt to breathe.

It’s perfect.

The church was closed and locked right now, of course, since it was late at night. Tomorrow, after his day’s business was done, he’d return and talk to the priest. Explain that he would need to ring the bells himself on Tuesday at midnight. He would, of course, donate generously to the church.

That was the easy part. Acquiring what he needed 264 SUPERNATURAL

to perform the rituals in such a way that it would leave no trace for the constabulary was an expensive proposition, but ever since his wife passed away, he had plenty of ready money. In the end, dying was the best thing she did for him, as it provided him with both the money to do what needed to be done and the lack of her nagging presence to stop him.

Thus assured that his plan was set and good to go, needing only a victim—and he had the better part of a week to fi nd one—he turned to head toward where he’d parked his car, several blocks down University Avenue.

However, he was intercepted by a short man in an ugly suit, one whose face he had, of course, seen before, on the front page of a rather tiresome website.

The man, who went by the sobriquet of Arthur Gordon Pym in a misguided and rather tired attempt to show his devotion to the author, said, “It’s a tru-ism that criminals return to the scene of the crime, but I find it rather entertaining that you choose to come to the scene of the crime before it is one.” Pym shook his head. “I should’ve known it would be you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about.” He started to walk past Pym, but the little man simply moved so Nevermore

265

he was still in the way. “I don’t know who you are, but—”

“Yes, you do.”

He did, of course, but he saw no reason to let Pym know that. “Look, I’m just someone admir-ing this lovely church—”

“At eleven o’clock at night on a Wednesday?

That strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, especially given that this church is the likely site for the ritual you intend to perform on Tuesday next. I barely missed you Monday night, thanks to that damned trip wire, but I can assure you, good sir, I will not let you kill again.”

Now, suddenly, he was nervous. At first he fi gured to bluff his way out of it, but if Pym saw him at the 199th Street apartment, then there was no hope. He was on to him.

And then he realized that there was plenty of hope. He grinned, giddy with the brilliance of it.

“Something amuses you?”

“Yes. You.” And then he punched Pym in the face.

Pain slammed into his knuckles and wrist, and he shook it in agony. People did that sort of thing on tele vision all the time, and the victim always fell to the floor, unconscious. Pym, though, clutched the side of his head, and blood spurted out of his mouth.

266 SUPERNATURAL

“You hit me!” Pym cried, spitting more blood.

Of course I hit you, you nincompoop, it’s only
too bad you didn’t fall down.
He had no weapons with him—his .44 was back home—so he was de-fenseless without what he had thought to be the surefire trick of punching Pym in the face.

Left with no other option, he turned and ran, which had always worked in a pinch.

His legs were longer than Pym’s, and he had the element of surprise, so he put quite a bit of distance between himself and the diminutive Poe scholar. Even as he pumped his legs to move faster down the University Avenue sidewalk, passing apartment buildings and town houses, he remembered that he had some fishing line in the car, meant to help secure his victims. He’d needed it in partic u lar to hold Sarah Lowrance still, as she’d been particularly ornery before he was able to apply the sedative.

Reaching into his coat pocket with his good hand—the right one was still throbbing like mad—

he pulled out his car’s key chain and pushed the button that sprung the trunk open.

Sure enough, the fishing line was right where he remembered it to be. He grabbed it, along with a baseball that had been sitting in there since he got it free at a Yankee game his wife had insisted they go to back when she was alive. Grabbing Nevermore

267

that as well, he turned around to see Pym running down the sidewalk toward him, a cell phone at his ear.

I don’t know who you’re calling, but it’s not going through if I can help it.
He threw the baseball right at Pym’s head.

It struck him in the stomach instead, but it was enough to get him to stop running and stumble to the pavement.

He ran up to Pym, now wheezing on the sidewalk, grabbed the cell phone out of his hands and threw it against the wall of a nearby apartment building. Then he yanked Pym’s arms behind his back and started binding his wrists.

“What’re you doing?” Pym asked between heavy breaths. “Ow!” he added as the fi shing line cut into the skin of his wrists.

“Choosing my final victim,” was all he said in response as he tied the line tighter. He noticed a few people around, but they minded their own business and didn’t say anything. Still, one or more of them might have had a mobile phone, so it be-hooved him to get out of sight sooner rather than later. “Don’t worry—your name will go down in history as aiding in one of the greatest endeavors of humankind.” He smirked. “Though I doubt you’re in much of a position to appreciate that at present.

Worry not, I plan to give you due credit for your 268 SUPERNATURAL

sacrifice. After all, citing your sources is the heart of scholarship.”

He got up, yanking Pym to his feet by his bound wrists. Once again fate had favored him. This was his destiny, he just
knew
it.

Very soon now the answer will be mine!

SEVENTEEN

The Afi ri house

The Bronx, New York

Thursday 23 November 2006

A staple of old- fashioned detective fi ction, Sam knew, was to gather all the suspects in one room.

Poe didn’t do that in “The Murders on the Rue Morgue,” but that story’s descendants certainly did. The real world didn’t often work like that, of course, so having a chance to actually do so gave him a bit of what he was sure Dean would call a geeky thrill.