The Black Angel

“What is this place?” said Louis.

“It looks like a jail.”

“Seems like they forgot they had a guest down here.”

Something rustled in the closed cell. A rat, I thought. It’s only a rat. It has to be. Whoever was lying in that cell was long dead. It was tattered skin and yellowed bone, nothing more.

And then the man inside moved on his stone cot. His fingernails dragged across the stone, his right leg stretched almost imperceptibly, and his head shifted slightly where it rested. The effort it took was clearly enormous. I could see every wasted muscle working on his desiccated arms, and every tendon straining in his face as he tried to speak. His features were buried deep in his skull, as though they were slowly being sucked inside. The eyes were like rotted fruits in the hollows of the sockets, barely visible behind his emaciated hand as he sought to shield himself from the light while simultaneously trying to see those that lay behind it.

Louis took a step back.

“How can he still be alive?” he said. He could not keep the shock from his voice. I had never heard him speak like that before.

Like the half-life of an isotope: that remained the only way I could fathom it. The process of dying, but with the inevitable end delayed beyond imagining. Perhaps, like Kittim, this unknown man was proof of that belief.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Leave him.”

I saw Louis raise his pistol. The action surprised me. He was not a man known for conventional mercies. I laid my hand on the barrel of the gun, forcing it gently down.

“No,” I said.

The being on the stone slab tried to speak. I could see the desperation in its eyes, and I almost felt something of Louis’s pity for it. I turned away, and heard Louis follow.

By now we were deep beneath the ground, and far from the cemetery. From the direction in which we were heading, I believed that we were somewhere between the ossuary and the site of the former monastery nearby. There were more cells here, many with the portcullises lowered, but I glanced only in one or two as I went by. Those who had been incarcerated in them were now clearly dead, their bones long separated. They probably made mistakes along the way, I thought. It was like the old witch trials: if the suspects died, they were i

The heat grew more and more intense. The walls were hot to the touch, and our clothing became so burdensome that we were forced to shed our jackets and coats along the way. There was a rushing sound in my head. Threaded through it, I thought, I could discern words, except they were no longer fragments of an old incantation spoken in madness. These had purpose and intent. They were calling, urging.

There was light ahead of us. We saw a circular room, lined with open cells, and a trio of lanterns at its center. Beyond them stood the obese figure of Brightwell. He was working at a blank wall, trying to free a brick at the level of his head, using a crowbar. Beside him was the hooded, jacketed figure, its head lowered. Brightwell registered our presence first, because he turned suddenly, the crowbar still in his hands. I expected him to reach for a gun, but he did not. Instead, he seemed almost pleased. His mouth was disfigured, his lower lip crisscrossed with black stitches where Reid had bitten him during his final struggle.

“I knew,” he said. “I knew that you’d come.”

The figure to his right lowered its hood. I saw a woman’s gray hair hanging loose, then her face was exposed. In the lanternlight, Claudia Stern’s fine bone structure had taken on a thin, hungry aspect. Her skin was pale and dry, and when she opened her mouth to speak I thought that her teeth seemed longer than before, as though her gums were receding. There was a white mote in her right eye, previously hidden by some form of concealing lens. Brightwell handed the crowbar to her, but he made no attempt to move toward us or to threaten us in any way.

“Nearly done,” he said. “It’s good that you should be here for this.”

Claudia Stern inserted the crowbar into the gap Brightwell had made, and strained. I saw the stone shift in its place. She repositioned the bar, then pushed hard. The stone moved some thirty degrees, until it was perpendicular to the wall. In the gap revealed, I thought I saw something shine. With a final effort, she forced the stone away. It fell to the floor as she continued to work at the bricks, forcing them apart more easily now that the first breach had been made. I should have stopped her, but I did not. I realized that I, too, wanted to know what lay behind the wall. I wanted to see the Black Angel. A large square patch of silver was now clearly visible through the hole. I could pick out the shape of a rib, and the edge of what might have been an arm. The figure was rough and unfinished, with droplets of hardened silver fixed upon it like frozen tears.

Suddenly, as though responding to an unanticipated impulse, Claudia Stern dropped the crowbar and thrust her hand into the hole.

It took a moment for me to notice the temperature rising again, for it was already so hot in the chamber, but I began to feel my skin prickle and burn, as though I were standing unprotected in intense sunlight. I looked at my skin, almost expecting it to begin reddening as I watched. The voice in my head was louder now, a torrent of whispers like the rushing of water at a great fall, its substance unintelligible but its meaning clear. Close to where Stern was standing, liquid began to drip through holes in the mortar, sliding slowly down the walls like droplets of mercury. I could see them steaming, and I could smell the dust burning. Whatever lay behind that wall, it was now melting, the silver falling away to reveal whatever lay concealed within. Stern looked at Brightwell, and I could see the surprise on her face. This was clearly beyond her expectations. All of the preparations that they had made indicated that they had intended to transport the statue back to New York, not to have it melt around their feet. I heard a sound from behind the wall, like the beating of a wing, and it brought me back to where I was, reminding me of what I had to do.

I pointed my gun at Brightwell.

“Stop her.”

Brightwell didn’t move.

“You won’t use it,” he said. “We’ll come back.”

Beside me, Louis seemed to jerk his head. His face contorted, as though in pain, and he raised his left hand to his ear. Then I heard it too: a chorus of voices, their words raised in a cacophony of pleading, all coming from somewhere deep within Brightwell.

The silver drops had become a series of streams, seeping out through cracks in the walls. I thought I heard more movement behind the stones, but there was so much noise in my head that I could not be certain.

“You’re a sick, deluded man,” I said.

“You know it’s true,” he said. “You sense it in yourself.”

I shook my head.

“No, you’re wrong.”

“There is no salvation for you, or for any of us,” said Brightwell. “God deprived you of your wife, your child. Now He’s going to take a second woman away from you, and a second child. He doesn’t care. Do you think He would have allowed them to suffer as they did if they really mattered to Him, if anyone really mattered to Him? Why, then, would you believe in Him, and not in us? Why do you continue to have hope in Him?”

I struggled to find my voice. It seemed as though my vocal cords were burning.

“Because with you,” I said, “there is no hope at all.”

I sighted carefully along the barrel.

“You won’t kill me,” said Brightwell once more, but there was now doubt in his voice.

Suddenly, he moved. All at once he was everywhere, and nowhere. I heard his voice in my ear, felt his hands on my skin. His mouth opened, revealing those slightly blunted teeth. They were biting me, and my blood was pooling in his mouth as he tore into me.