Cemetery Dance

He flicked it off and remained in the dark, thinking. He made a quick calculation, a swift decision. This creature, this zombii, had been possessed by his minders of a terrible and murderous purpose. On the loose, he presented a grave threat to them both. And yet Pendergast had confidence in D'Agosta — a confidence almost amounting to faith. The lieutenant could take care of himself if anyone could.

But Nora — Nora still awaited rescue.

Pendergast flicked the light back on and examined the next room. It was a veritable necropolis of wooden coffins laid out on rows of elevated stone pedestals, some stacked two and three high, many collapsing and spilling their contents to the ground. It appeared as if many of the basement spaces of the Ville, originally built for other purposes, had been converted to storing the dead.

But as he turned away, preparing to renew his search for Nora, he caught a glimpse of something at the very head of the room — an unusual tomb. Something about it arrested his attention. He approached to examine it more closely, and then, making a decision, laid a hand on it.

It was a coffin, made of thick lead. Instead of being set on a bier like the others, it had been sunken into the stonework of the floor, only its top projecting above the ground. What caught his eye was that the lid was ajar and the vault within had clearly been looted — very recently looted.

He examined it more intently. In past centuries, lead had often been the material of choice for interring an important person because of its preservative qualities. Playing the light over it, he noted just how carefully the coffin had been sealed, the lead lid soldered firmly to the top. But someone had hacked open the lead cover with an ax, chopping violently through the seal and prying the lid off, leaving a ragged, gaping hole. This had been done not only recently, but in great haste. The marks in the soft metal were bright and shiny, showing no signs of dulling or oxidation.

Pendergast looked inside. The body — which had mummified in the sealed environment — had been roughly disturbed, something wrenched out of its crooked hands, the ossified fingers broken and scattered, one arm torn from its dusty socket.

He reached inside and felt the corpse dust, gauging its dryness. This had happened so recently that not even the damp air of the room had had time to settle inside the coffin. The looting must have occurred less than thirty minutes ago.

Coincidence? Certainly not.

Pendergast turned his attention to the dead body itself. It was a remarkably well — preserved corpse of an old man with a full white beard and long white hair. Two golden guineas were pressed on its eyes. The face was shriveled like an old apple, the lips drawn back from the teeth by desiccation, the skin darkened to the color of fine old ivory. The body was dressed in simple, Quaker — like clothes — a sober frock coat, shirt, brown waistcoat, and pale breeches — but the clothes around the chest had been ripped open and disarranged by the looting, buttons and bits scattered about in what appeared to have been a frenzied search of the corpse. On the man's disarranged chest, Pendergast could see pressure marks on the clothing of what had evidently been a small, square container — a box.

That, along with the broken fingers, told a story. The looter had wrenched a box from the corpse's dusty grasp.

On the floor behind the coffin, Pendergast spied the broken remains of what could only be the very box, the dry — rotted top wrenched off. He leaned over and examined it more closely, sniffing it, noting its dimensions. The faint smell of vellum confirmed his initial impression that the box had held a quarto — size document.

Slowly, deliberately, Pendergast walked around the coffin lid. At the top end, stamped into the lead, he could see an inscription, obscured by whitish blooms of oxide. He wiped the oxide away with his sleeve and read the inscription.

Elijah Esteban

Who Departed this Life Novbr 22d 1745

In his 55th Year

How doleful is the Sound,

How vaft the Stroke

Which maketh the Mortall Wounde.

Ye living,

Come View the Ground

Where ye muft shortly lie.

Pendergast stared at the name on the tomb for a long time. And then, quite suddenly, everything fell into place and he understood. His face darkened as he thought of the catastrophic mistake he had made. This looted coffin wasn't a coincidence, an irrelevant sideshow — it was the main event.

Chapter 68

The creature was gone — somehow, D'Agosta had outrun it or it had given up the pursuit. Although the latter didn't seem likely: the thing might be a shambling zombii, but it had the tenacity of a pit bull. Maybe, he thought, its absence had something to do with a faint commotion he had heard from above, like a stampede. He sagged against the damp stone, half stu

He sat up. As he did, pain shot through his right forearm. He probed gingerly with his left hand, felt the bone grinding on bone. It was obviously fractured.

"Pendergast?" he spoke into the dark.

No sound.

He tried to orient himself, to place himself in the welter of tu

So he was still being hunted, after all.

He called out as loudly as he dared. "Pendergast!"

No reply.

His flashlight was gone, but he remembered the old Zippo lighter he carried in his pocket, a habit from his cigar — smoking days. He took it out and flicked it on. He was in a small room, with an arched doorway opening into a brick tu

The heat from the lighter began to burn his finger and he let it go out. He had to make his way back, locate his gun and flashlight, find Pendergast. And, above all, they had to locate Nora.

He cursed out loud and flicked the lighter back on. Trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his arm, using the brick wall for support, he moved into the main tu

He staggered along slowly. Had they traveled down this tu

The sounds from above were louder: yells, the squawk of a bull — horn, a crash. It didn't sound like a ceremony anymore. It sounded like the protesters had arrived.

Was that why the thing had vanished? Nothing else made sense.

"Pendergast!"

Suddenly, he saw lights in the darkness and a group of congregants appeared at a bend in the tu

D'Agosta swallowed, took a step back, wondering if they had spotted him in the dark.

Crying out with what seemed a single voice, the group charged toward him.

D'Agosta turned and ran, tucking his broken forearm against his chest, fleeing as best he could down the darkened tu