worthwhile goal. He strode forward to begin his campaign. Within two steps, the emotions evaporated. For a moment he was a wrung sponge, exhausted. Then fear regained its usurped throne. Gray turned around to stare at where he’d fallen. He found he couldn’t swallow. He tried to rationalize, came up with nothing better than dead-of-night terrors and psychological predisposition. He didn’t buy it. He’d had confirmation of the tabs’ wettest dream. Meacham would be terribly disappointed if he let her team in.
A sliver of hope, just then: maybe not. Maybe her pet scientist could debunk what had just happened.
He backed out of the chapel and took the stairs to the ground floor. He would spend the rest of the night in the library, he decided. He would sit in full illumination, try to read, maybe try to sleep, and above all try to reconnect with the rational world. The staircase creaked under his feet. The noise was huge and alarming. Gray winced as if he would wake something up. Stop it , he told himself. Stop that now. He couldn’t allow himself to believe what he very much did. He began to grow angry again as the immediacy of terror receded. He was angry at himself. He expected better of his mind.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped when he realized what room opened across a short hall from him. The crypt lay directly below the Old Chapel. He wished he didn’t see a connection. As punishment, he made himself approach the doorway. He turned on the hall lights and looked inside. There were no fixtures in the crypt, and the illumination spilled a pale glow into a third of its depth. It had remained unchanged since the fourteenth century. The stone-ribbed vault was low, and the space looked like a small, sullen church. It had never been one, to Gray’s knowledge. It was square, except for an odd recess in the southwest corner, invisible now without the daylight leaking in from the small window in the east wall. Nothing , Gray thought. The word was hollow, its meaning evacuated by the Old Chapel. Go inside , he said. Prove something.
He went inside, but only to cut across the width in the light from the hall. He stayed close to the wall, didn’t look into the crypt’s interior. He moved quickly, almost running, until he reached the other doorway. He wasn’t grabbed. His heart didn’t stop. He began to feel foolish and was relieved. You’re not off the hook yet, he scolded, and went to the kitchen, where he found a flashlight in a drawer next to the sink. He headed back to the crypt and shone the beam into its depths. The stone was impassive. He looked at the ceiling and visualized the layout of the chapel above. He thought the chapel’s danger zone coincided with the central keystone. One more experiment , he thought. He wondered why he was even contemplating this. He decided he could wait until morning, then realized that he was already walking forward. Hang on , he thought. He changed his mind. He told his feet to stop. They ignored him. He stood beneath the vault. The night made a fist and smashed his skull.
The dream came down on Roseminster. It took everyone. Citizen or visitor, investigator or media, they all went down. Anyone who had ever had a thought of Gethsemane Hall had the infection, and the symptoms clamped down hard. (In Washington, Jim Korda’s wife wondered why her husband was gasping dread in his sleep and why she couldn’t wake him up.) The dream had no images. It told no narrative. When at last they escaped it, the sufferers would not remember the dream, because there was nothing in it to remember. There was only the black, suffocating, strangling, immense and knowing. The dream said nothing, but it taught a lesson. It was the lesson whose pain and truth were so complete that it stabbed Roseminster awake. Every infected soul woke shrieking at the truth, unable ever to share the nightmare because of the lesson.
The lesson had three words: you are alone .
chapter nine
jaws wide
A sliver of hope, just then: maybe not. Maybe her pet scientist could debunk what had just happened.
He backed out of the chapel and took the stairs to the ground floor. He would spend the rest of the night in the library, he decided. He would sit in full illumination, try to read, maybe try to sleep, and above all try to reconnect with the rational world. The staircase creaked under his feet. The noise was huge and alarming. Gray winced as if he would wake something up. Stop it , he told himself. Stop that now. He couldn’t allow himself to believe what he very much did. He began to grow angry again as the immediacy of terror receded. He was angry at himself. He expected better of his mind.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped when he realized what room opened across a short hall from him. The crypt lay directly below the Old Chapel. He wished he didn’t see a connection. As punishment, he made himself approach the doorway. He turned on the hall lights and looked inside. There were no fixtures in the crypt, and the illumination spilled a pale glow into a third of its depth. It had remained unchanged since the fourteenth century. The stone-ribbed vault was low, and the space looked like a small, sullen church. It had never been one, to Gray’s knowledge. It was square, except for an odd recess in the southwest corner, invisible now without the daylight leaking in from the small window in the east wall. Nothing , Gray thought. The word was hollow, its meaning evacuated by the Old Chapel. Go inside , he said. Prove something.
He went inside, but only to cut across the width in the light from the hall. He stayed close to the wall, didn’t look into the crypt’s interior. He moved quickly, almost running, until he reached the other doorway. He wasn’t grabbed. His heart didn’t stop. He began to feel foolish and was relieved. You’re not off the hook yet, he scolded, and went to the kitchen, where he found a flashlight in a drawer next to the sink. He headed back to the crypt and shone the beam into its depths. The stone was impassive. He looked at the ceiling and visualized the layout of the chapel above. He thought the chapel’s danger zone coincided with the central keystone. One more experiment , he thought. He wondered why he was even contemplating this. He decided he could wait until morning, then realized that he was already walking forward. Hang on , he thought. He changed his mind. He told his feet to stop. They ignored him. He stood beneath the vault. The night made a fist and smashed his skull.
The dream came down on Roseminster. It took everyone. Citizen or visitor, investigator or media, they all went down. Anyone who had ever had a thought of Gethsemane Hall had the infection, and the symptoms clamped down hard. (In Washington, Jim Korda’s wife wondered why her husband was gasping dread in his sleep and why she couldn’t wake him up.) The dream had no images. It told no narrative. When at last they escaped it, the sufferers would not remember the dream, because there was nothing in it to remember. There was only the black, suffocating, strangling, immense and knowing. The dream said nothing, but it taught a lesson. It was the lesson whose pain and truth were so complete that it stabbed Roseminster awake. Every infected soul woke shrieking at the truth, unable ever to share the nightmare because of the lesson.
The lesson had three words: you are alone .
chapter nine
jaws wide
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