“A key to what?”
He points a finger at the barbed heading at the top of a page. “A black site. Also known as a dusk or night chapel. A place of worship. Where unholiness gathers. And—with some encouragement—bleeds into this world.” He stares at her for a long few seconds and then shows off his pipe-yellowed teeth in a grin. “It’s rather splendid to think about, isn’t it? Especially at this haunted time of year?”
“The Rue.” She remembers what Hannah saw when they crossed the Burnside Bridge. A pillar of darkness rising out of the Pearl District. “The Rue is the black site.”
“In this case I prefer the term ‘night chapel.’? Here’s why: the skull.” Lela told him there were five graves, arranged in a kind of circle, at the construction site. “This,” he says, “seems to indicate the pentagram, a holy number and sigil to any dark parishioner. Some see it as a representation of the five wounds of Jesus Christ or the binding of the five elements. Or infinity.”
She holds up her right hand, remembering the bloodied handprint that was Tusk’s signature. “Five fingers.”
“What’s that?” Daniel says, and she doesn’t answer, lost in thought. “Regardless, if the skull was one of five, then it seems to me it was ritualized and must be some kind of relic.” He talks about how, over five hundred years ago, St. Peter’s Basilica was built in the Vatican. There are marble towers staggered throughout the interior that were constructed to entomb the skull of a saint, the lance that pierced Jesus’s side, and the cloth that cleaned his dead face. The Vatican did this because it understood the importance of relics. Go into any European church and you’ll find more of the same—relics—typically constructed into the altar. A piece of an exhumed saint’s body, maybe a hand or an ear, or a splash of a saint’s blood. Sometimes priests will even wear the relics, such as a finger bone braided into a necklace or hat. “This isn’t unique to Christianity. Just as hell isn’t limited to Christianity. Virtually every religion has some iteration of the same thing, as though trying to get at the same truth that escapes them all. Relics are understood to channel and harness power. For good. And for evil.” Daniel removes a handkerchief from his pocket, and though the store is cool, he wipes the sweat beading on his forehead.
She picks up the skull and holds it before her face. She can’t fight the feeling that it’s going to open its jaws and bite her. She remembers the story Josh told her over the phone, the one about the Shadow People that haunted the Northwest before the local tribes banded together to extinguish them and reclaim their territory. This skull was one of the husks they left behind.
“If they were exhuming the skeletons,” Daniel says, “then I think it’s fair to say they wanted to use them.”
“For what?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you before. In the book here, Lock and Key. The designs on this skull match the designs in this chapter.”
“What’s the chapter called?”
“The layman’s translation?” He tips his head and his glasses catch the orange light of the lamp. “Gates of Hell.”
?
The sky is a predawn pink. Lela does not walk directly to The Weary Traveler, but zigzags her way through downtown, checking over her shoulder every block, hurrying past alleyways.
She finds the rear entrance to The Weary Traveler unlocked. Inside several men busy themselves in the kitchen and dining room, helping themselves to whatever is in the fridge and cupboards. One is drinking directly from a milk jug, and another is trying to clean up the spilled grounds and murky puddles surrounding the coffeemaker. A few sit at the tables, pouring cereal, spreading jelly on toast, arguing over the crossword puzzle in the paper. The counter is a mess of bran flakes and broken eggs. Something on the burner smokes.
“What are you doing?” She yanks the pan of blackened bacon and snaps off the heating element.
“Making breakfast of course,” says the man with the milk jug. He’s older, lean, and tan with a dent in his forehead. He wears a white undershirt, fleece pants. His feet are bare and veined and slap the floor when he walks toward her. “Care for a glass?” He holds out the jug. “It’s whole. The way milk ought to be.”
“Where’s Mike Juniper?” she says.
“Who’s that again?” he says.
“Juniper. He runs the shelter.”
The old man knits his eyebrows together, and then his face softens as the question escapes him. He seems to see her for the first time and once more holds out the jug. “Care for a glass? It’s whole. The way milk ought to be.”
She pushes past him and scoops a few spilled coffee beans off the counter and pops them into her mouth and chews them down for the bitter punch. She starts down the hallway. She can hear the television blaring in the lounge, and on the couch she finds a man in a hoodie, clicking through the channels. When she asks him if he’s seen Juniper, he shrugs and returns his attention to the screen.
She heads to the entryway next and immediately notices the tablet hanging beside the door. It streams with what looks like a red rain, some ever-expanding code. Her brain is foggy from a severe lack of sleep and caffeine, but this is enough to jack her attention. Everything in the shelter is controlled by a central interface—that’s what Juniper told her—the locks, alarm system, climate control.
Now her hair prickles and her flesh tightens, her senses going from bleary to acute. There is something tannic in the air. And though the light is dim, it is enough for her to see. Lela drops to her knees with a choked cry. She puts her hands to her mouth.
Above the reception desk hangs her sister, Cheryl, in a state of crucifixion, her head lolled to one side and her hands and feet nailed to the cross. Blue light surrounds her and blood mucks the wall below her. It spills to the floor and runs below the desk and floods forward like the entryway’s red runner.
And finger-painted on either side of the crucifix, in big oozy letters, reads the following message: WE HAVE THE GIRL. BRING US THE RELIC.
Lela does not know about the worm that took hold of her sister last night, that still possesses the shelter, nor does she realize that Cheston has escaped from below or that Juniper lies upstairs on a blood-soaked mattress, his breath as shallow as his pulse. These discoveries will come later. For now she rushes through the building, calling out, “Hannah! Hannah!” to empty room after empty room, knowing her niece is gone but needing to confirm for herself the terrible knowledge that she has failed her family, that this is all her fault.
Chapter 19