The Arcanum (18 page)

The creatures swayed and squealed, studying their prey.

“Go!” he roared. He snarled at the creatures, readjusting his grip on the wood.

Then, with fluid precision belied by their awkward gait, they struck together, hooks biting savagely into flesh.

Abigail screamed and charged.

Matthew twisted in agony, one sickle blade embedded in his chest, the other caught under his ribs. He gazed up at Abigail, his eyes pleading, his lips wet with blood. “I love you. Go!”

Abigail stood frozen as the creatures continued to attack Matthew. They ripped his jacket away as two more hooks rose in the air and fell wetly into his flesh. But when one of them swiveled in Abigail’s direction, a jolt of fear shook her from her trance. She stumbled backwards as it raised a blade, slick with Matthew’s blood, then she turned and fled.

She tried to run over the uneven surface of the tracks, but the creatures were fast. Three of them broke off from the others and sped after Abigail, their robes flowing behind them. They moved far too fast, slowly but surely cutting her off. She heard the rustling of robes to her right and left, and the burbling squeal of a creature rising up behind her. She drove her legs to their limit but the darkness only swallowed her deeper and deeper down its endless throat. There was a stench of decay on the air, a wafting charnel odor. She couldn’t run anymore. They had her.

With a sob, Abigail stopped running. Her body shook beneath the heavy man’s coat she wore. Her eyes were filled with tears as she gazed at the creatures. Their arms were overly long, and the sickles they carried scraped the ground. As one of them scuttled toward her, she lashed out reflexively with a cry. This prompted a round of tremulous squeals, sounding not unlike laughter. The creatures were playing with her, darting in and out of the circle of her reach, squealing gleefully as she beat her fists futilely at the air. But in the next moment, the play was done and the hooks rose together. The creatures howled, and then a blinding burst of fire and smoke threw them back.

Abigail’s ears rang from the blast, and she felt warm, muscular arms enfold her. If this was death, she thought, then someone must have taken pity on her.

DOYLE CLUTCHED A torch in one hand, banishing the shadows. His sword was clenched in the other. When one of the demons raised its sickle, he fought it back with his sword, hacking its bony arm deeply above one elbow.

Bellows of confusion tore through the demon ranks.

Then Lovecraft emerged out of the darkness, hurling makeshift torches in a semicircle about the demons. “This won’t hold them long,” he warned.

Away from the battle, Houdini set the bewildered Abigail down on the ground. His hand touched her cheek. “You’re safe.”

“Marie,” Doyle shouted.

The voodoo queen’s smile was strange and frightening. Her eyes shone. She began clicking her teeth together, uttering a high-pitched, piercing cry. In her clenched fists were small animal bones that she shook like dice, in time with her bizarre call.

More demons had gathered, spreading out to attack.

Marie continued toward them, still uttering her cry.

Lovecraft grabbed Doyle’s arm. “For God’s sake, what’s she doing?”

Doyle was about to pull Marie back, when he sensed movement around them. “Fall back!” He shoved Lovecraft into the shadows and waved his sword at Houdini. “Fall back!”

“Why? What’s happening?” Lovecraft demanded, his voice frantic.

“The walls,” Doyle answered.

A veritable waterfall of rats was boiling forth from the walls. Writhing bodies wormed out of cracks and fell from the arched ceiling, their slick black fur gleaming in the torchlight. They squirmed free of holes in the ground and wriggled out from under the train tracks. The tunnel shook with the collective squeak and chitter as the rats surged forth, creating a vermin barrier between the Arcanum and the demon horde.

The demonic squeals of rage were lost in the tumult, but just before the torches were doused by the sheer volume of rats, Doyle saw the demons turn and retreat, their robes weighted down with dozens of small, clinging bodies.

29

WHEN THE RAIN finally abated, the city smelled fresh and the buildings shimmered. The sky slowly awakened in a palette of bruised blues.

After arranging for a Dodge sedan to pick them up, Houdini then sent an anonymous tip, through his assistant Franz Kukol, to the police at Fourth Ward, detailing the whereabouts of Matthew’s body. Now their only hope was to return the woman they had rescued, who said her name was Abigail, to her guardians at the New York Rescue Mission before her shock transformed into a dangerous catatonia.

The ride was silent, and their mood grim. What they’d seen that evening confirmed many of their worst fears but provided few new answers.

Houdini was holding Abigail to his chest as she stared out the window. Her eyes were at half-mast, but she was neither awake nor asleep.

Doyle rested his head in his hands, still struggling to conceive of newer, better strategies, growing ever more conscious of the horrifying consequences should they fail to catch up with the killers.

Marie was sound asleep, utterly spent.

Lovecraft, Doyle noticed, seemed to find it difficult to take his eyes off Abigail, but his gaze wasn’t probing like a scientist’s. Instead, there was something open in Lovecraft’s expression. His lips were slightly parted. Doyle wondered if he saw the same beauty in the oily blond ringlets hanging about Abigail’s cheeks, and in her delicate features, puckered for now in a child’s frown.

Then suddenly, Abigail’s green eyes flew wide. She glared at Lovecraft, looking both feral and terrified. He dropped his gaze to his shoes, looking stricken—and didn’t look up again until Abigail drifted back into semiconsciousness.

Though it was only half-past seven in the morning, Orchard Street was bustling with wagons filled with crates of lettuce, carrots, and potatoes. Wheelbarrows spilled over with raw chickens and eggs. Dodge trucks, open at the back, offered barrels of apples and fresh-squeezed cider. Shoppers swarmed, and goods were stuffed in brown bags amid the incessant din of market day. Laundry hung from fire escapes and windowsills, like flags of victory.

Kukol, who was driving, beeped the horn to clear a path. But the pedestrians, on principle, still refused to give ground to automobiles, so they crawled along at a snail’s pace. And it wasn’t only the market traffic that caused the delay. Bells clanged in the distance, and Kukol thrust his head out the window. There was a small cone of smoke rising above the roofs.

“Franz, what’s the problem?” Houdini asked from the backseat.

“Fire,” Kukol responded.

After the traumas of the evening, nothing so minor could stir them. Soon an artery gave way and traffic again flowed down Orchard Street, and through the Bowery, toward Chinatown. On Canal, Kukol found himself driving side by side with fire trucks heavy with unsmiling volunteers. The bells were now a constant clamor.

Doyle shifted uneasily in his seat.

“Franz, stop the car,” Houdini ordered.

Kukol applied the brakes and Houdini detached Abigail’s arms from around his neck and leaped out onto the sidewalk. Doyle followed and said to Lovecraft, “Keep her here, you understand?”

Lovecraft nodded.

Doyle and Houdini ducked down an alley. Above them, a noxious cloud of billowing black smoke hovered over the buildings. They cut through a playground and stepped onto Doyers Street, where a crowd had gathered and a snarl of fire trucks blocked an intersection. Houdini and Doyle ducked between the trucks, onlookers, police, and volunteers, until they stood before their target.

The Chinese Theatre, home to the New York Rescue Society, was in flames, engulfed in a laughing, wind-frenzied inferno. The fire licked greedily at the sky, caught on sheets of gusting wind. Golds and oranges, yellows and reds shimmered as the flames roared up the walls and exploded out of windows.

“No,” was all Doyle could muster.

Charred bodies, frozen in positions of agony, lined the sidewalks at the feet of the bucket-wielding firefighters. Police pushed back gawking neighbors. Doyers Street was choked to capacity with emergency vehicles. Panicked screams could still be heard inside the building despite the roar of the flames. The heat scalded skin fifty feet away, but still the firefighters continued pushing closer. It was hopeless, though. The Mission House was a hissing oven.

Doyle pulled at Houdini’s sleeve. “Hurry. We can’t let her see this.”

Houdini nodded, and just then Doyle spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Detective Mullin was looking right at him, from some fifty feet away, his cheeks smeared with soot. His eyes narrowed to slits as he reached into his jacket for his pistol. “Hold!”

Doyle shoved Houdini through the crowd and into the maze of fire trucks and wagons.

Mullin used his elbows and gun to clear a path, spilling water buckets from the hands of the firefighters, and knocking gawkers onto the sidewalk.

Houdini and Doyle emerged onto the other side of Doyers Street and waved for Kukol. “Start the car! Start it!” Houdini shouted.

Mullin burst through the crowd, just in time to see Doyle dive into the back of a speeding Dodge sedan.

JULIE KARCHER, THE Houdinis’personal assistant and Bess’s lifelong friend, opened the door as Doyle charged through, carrying an unconscious Abigail. The Arcanum followed behind him.

Bess led them into a warm den on the first floor of their Harlem mansion. A fire crackled in the fireplace.

“Are you all right?” Bess asked.

Houdini kissed her on the forehead. “She’s been through a trauma,” he answered. “We’ll rest here and move her tonight. It will be safer then anyway.”

Julie Karcher bustled by them, knowing better than to ask too many questions. “There’s soup on the stove, and I’ll get some tea with lemon.”

“And extra blankets, Julie. Use the ones on the third floor,” Bess added.

“Right away.”

Bess turned to her husband, her face stern. “Just what are you involved in?”

“It’s Arthur’s fault,” Houdini answered.

“Are you in danger?”

“Of course not.”

“You are a terrible liar.” And Bess punched him lightly in the stomach.

Houdini sighed. “This is serious business, my darling.”

“But why—”

Houdini shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, love.”

“Very well,” Bess said solemnly, as Houdini went to join Doyle in the corridor.

“Everything all right?” Doyle asked him.

Houdini gazed back at his wife with undisguised adoration. “She’ll look after the girl. She’ll be safe here. Why don’t you and the others take rooms upstairs? We’ll sleep through the day, then get back to work.”

“I fear we may have lost more today than we can even realize,” Doyle said. “I know you put no stock in Lovecraft’s theories . . .”

“I’m open to a great deal more than you give me credit for, Arthur.” Houdini checked his pocket watch. “So, in eight hours we’re back on the case. Where to then, Detective?”

“The morgue,” was Doyle’s grim reply.

30

THE STEEL SLAB erupted from the wall, exposing two bloated, purplish legs and a frosty bottle of milk between them. Ray Bozeman picked up the milk and poured some into his coffee. Then he returned the bottle to its place and studied the dead man’s legs a moment. For no particular reason, Ray plucked a curled black hair from one of the frozen thighs. Then he took another deep sip of coffee and slammed the freezer door.

Ray’s desk was covered with a mountain of paperwork. There were forms and more forms. It had been a busy night. The fire in Chatham Square had forced St. John’s morgue to split duties with St. Luke’s, all the way up on 116th Street. Twenty-five charred bodies in total, not to mention another victim of the Occult Killer found in the subway tunnels of the City Hall station.

Ray yawned and grabbed the first form off the pile. Simultaneously, a slender hand reached around from behind him and cupped a handkerchief over his mouth. Ray stiffened and struggled for all of three seconds before he slid off his chair and onto the floor.

MARIE STUFFED THE chloroform-soaked handkerchief into Ray Bozeman’s shirt pocket, took his keys from his belt, and went to the back door of the morgue, where she opened the doors for the rest of the Arcanum.

ST. JOHN’S HOSPITAL on the Lower East Side was a dreary place, catering as it did to the neediest, sickest, and poorest segment of Manhattan’s population. And it was ideally suited for the Arcanum’s purposes this evening because it was also woefully understaffed, thus ensuring them privacy.

Doyle quickly found the freezers. In the center of the room, which was lit by hanging electric lightbulbs, were metal tables, thankfully empty. Beside the tables were buckets, and stands of operating equipment. The left side of the room held cabinets of cleansers, soaps, and chemicals, and two sinks side by side. To the far right was a large freezer whose engine banged noisily. The freezer had forty metal doors. On each, a clipboard dangled by a nail.

They fanned out across the morgue, checking the body descriptions on the clipboards.

Lovecraft wrinkled his nose. “They’re all burned.” He turned to the others. “You can smell it on the air.”

“Stay focused,” Doyle advised him, squinting to read the small writing on the clipboards.

“He’s here,” Marie said, backing away.

Doyle double-checked the file sheet. “All right. Stand back. This won’t be pleasant.” He pulled the handle, hard. The steel platform rolled out fast on its tracks and stopped with a clang.

Houdini shut his eyes and turned away, muttering, “Christ.”

Marie crossed herself and backed up against the wall.

Lovecraft leaned in, fascinated. “What happened to his face?”

Doyle’s experience as a field doctor in the Boer War aided him here. “Rats,” he said.

“Ah,” Lovecraft responded.

“Let’s get him onto the table,” Doyle said. He removed his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves.

Moments later, Doyle set his medical kit on the autopsy table. He gazed at Matthew’s butchered body. While most of his curly, blondish hair was still intact, the boy’s face had been chewed away by rats, leaving a deep red, sinewy mask, punctuated by the white bones of his skull. The neck, too, had been gnawed to a gaping, stringy morass of flesh and shredded muscle. His chest was largely unmarred, but his abdomen was open, with his intestines piled sloppily on top. No doubt some clumsy medical technician had taken the organs off the ground and attempted to stuff them back into the body. Matthew’s legs were also riddled with rat bites, though there was one large puncture wound on the right hip.

Doyle opened his satchel and brought out his magnifying glass. He scanned the body, searching for clues.

“Anything?” Lovecraft asked.

“This carnage speaks for itself,” Doyle answered. He straightened and sighed with frustration. “Let’s turn him over.”

Reluctantly, Houdini took Matthew’s cold feet as Doyle held the boy’s shoulders. “One, two, three . . .”

They rolled him over.

“Mon Dieu,”
Marie exclaimed.

“What in Heaven . . . ?” Doyle whispered.

Matthew’s back was completely shredded. Skinned. Violently torn open between the shoulder blades. Doyle spoke aloud as he probed the injuries with a scalpel. “Trauma to the musculature of the upper ribs through the latissimus dorsi and the trapezius. The spine is missing from the fifth lumbar vertebra to the seventh cervical vertebra. What . . . what is this?” Doyle examined two nubs of thick muscle parallel to the shoulder blades. “Could be a torus, I suppose. Odd.”

Houdini stepped forward. “What is it?”

Doyle passed his magnifying glass over the injuries. “Extraordinary thickness to the teres major and minor. Look, here, at the density of the infraspinatus. It’s as if . . .”

“. . . he’s deformed,” Lovecraft finished.

“How?” Houdini asked.

Doyle hesitated. “Without the spine, I can’t say, exactly. A curvature, perhaps. The musculature compensated somehow—”

“You know that’s not it at all,” Lovecraft interrupted.

“Explain yourselves,” Houdini demanded.

Doyle wiped the sweat off his brow. “Something congenital. A malformation—”

“Don’t allow your logical mind to blur the truth, Arthur, difficult though it might be to absorb,” Lovecraft scolded.

Doyle grew angry. “I’m a physician, and I understand anatomy. And this is not right.” He searched for the words. “If I were to design a physiology that could . . . a musculature that would accommodate . . .” He hesitated again.

“Flight,” Lovecraft said firmly.

“Flight, very well, Howard, if you want to hear me say it. Yes. A musculature designed to accommodate flight.” Doyle’s shoulders sagged.

“So, you’re . . . ?” Houdini looked at the body. “So, you’re saying . . .” He chuckled nervously. “What you’re saying is this boy had
wings
? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not a boy,” Lovecraft cautioned, “but a creature of the Mythos. Something that looks like us and has learned to behave as we do. But it is not us.” Lovecraft turned to the others, a glint in his eyes. “Steel yourselves. For this is a revelation that our minds are ill equipped to endure.”

“They’re taking the wings,” Doyle said with a tremor in his voice. He flashed back to his conversation with Archbishop Hayes and seized Lovecraft’s arm. “That is the mechanism.”

“What do you mean?” Lovecraft asked.

Doyle’s voice was thick with emotion. “The cutting of the cord. The severing of the wings. The separation of the material and the spirit. God took his wings . . .”

Lovecraft caught on. “And now the Devil wants them back.”

Suddenly, Doyle wheeled around to the freezers and began pulling open the doors. Charred-black bodies rolled out into the air.

“Doyle, what are you doing?” Houdini ran over to pull him back, but Doyle shook him off and continued throwing open doors and yanking out the body trays. The stench of burned flesh permeated the room.

“Why didn’t I see it?” Doyle muttered. “Examine them,” he said louder. “All of them.”

Twelve bodies in all were exposed. Houdini pinched his nose for the smell and bent over, feeling his stomach turn.

Marie and Lovecraft spread out across the room, turning the corpses over by their shriveled, petrified arms, gazing at their backs, searching for injuries.

Doyle’s voice shook. “My God, what evil is this?”

“It’s her. Arthur!” Lovecraft said.

Doyle ran over.

“It’s her. What’s-her-name.” Lovecraft pointed.

Doyle gazed down at the mangled, charred corpse of a woman. Her skull and face were blackened from the fire, the hair burned away, her features melted into a gluey clump.

“Judith. Wasn’t that her name?” Lovecraft asked.

Doyle could make out no distinguishing features. “How do we know it’s her?”

“The brooch,” Lovecraft answered. His finger pointed to the corpse’s throat where Judith’s porcelain butterfly brooch had seared into the flesh. “Now, look.” Somewhat ungracefully, Lovecraft wrenched the body onto its side so Doyle could see a gaping hole where Judith’s spine used to be.

“And her husband, too. Joe,” Doyle said softly.

“Yes. And I’d wager many others at the uptown morgue,” Lovecraft replied. “We’ve found the Lost Tribe of Enoch.”

Doyle was unreachable. “What evil is this?” he whispered again.