His Cemetery Doll (19 page)

"Alone...with my baby coming...I turned to the church. They sent me to the convent of Saint Margaret to have my child."

Conall saw the path of this story now. Asya found her way to Whitetail Knoll, same as he had. She'd sought sanctuary under the auspices of the Saint of pregnant women.

There, Father Frederick discovered her.

"
Necromancer."

The word came from her like a snap of bitter, black ice. In it Conall heard depths of loathing, outrage, and the fruitless cry of violation.

"For many weeks, we barely noticed one another. He came to say Mass, three times a week. I worked alongside the nuns, filling my day with work to stave off any threat of self-pity. Then, one day, he approached me at breakfast, as though we'd been the dearest friends for years. 'Oh, Miss Kariyeva,' he said to me, 'I once saw you dance in Belgium. So sorry to hear of your present unpleasant circumstances.' But he did not mean the bombing or my poor lover's demise. He meant
the baby.
He meant, because I had not been married."

Ribbons rolled, silk against his skin. Conall slid his hands around her, pulling her close, feeling her disgust. He held onto it with her, his own anger boiling to think anyone could call Shyla an
unpleasant circumstance.

From the beginning, she'd disliked Father Frederick. Conall watched roiling black shadow and spitting distrust follow the priest through Asya's mind. He
oozed,
like sickening-sweet tar in her thoughts.

Miss Kariyeva...you must certainly have trained very well as a ballerina.

I understand it takes a great deal of strength and stamina to maintain such skill.

Asya, won't you walk with me a ways? I would enjoy your company this morning.

"He became like an unwelcome suitor. The more I rebuffed him, the closer he came."

Conall recognized sensations shivering through her, as though they were his own: he felt Frederick's hand closing on her arm; he caught the creeping goosebumps along the back of her neck when the priest's eyes followed her in the cloisters.

"One night," she whispered, breath like dark lace against his ear, "I woke. He stood beside my bed. I saw him drop something—some vile poison—into the water glass on my table. He meant it for her. He wished to
kill
her."

"Why?" Conall whispered. His left hand returned to her belly, a motion so natural, so instinctive. Hers covered his. With his other hand he cradled the back of her head, their brows touching.

"He wanted
me.
"

She's rather lovely, wouldn't you say?

...it takes a great deal of strength and stamina...

"He wanted me...
ready."

Ready for experiments.

Conall's fingers outlined the invisible tributaries of the patchwork scars.

I wanted to perfect immortality.

"You weren't perfect," he said. "
Wouldn't
be, couldn't be a perfectly immortal, while you carried another man's child."

"I told the sisters of his attempt. They did not believe me. I tried to leave, but they stopped me. When I continued to fight...he spread rumors I must be going mad."

"He made you a prisoner."

Asya drew in a deep, heavy breath, and let it out in a weary, wraithlike sigh. Bloody tears began again.

Conall pulled her to him, holding her tight against his chest, stroking her long, lovely hair. She must have found a way to flee the convent, soon after Shyla arrived. She would have been utterly alone, desperate to escape a priest out of his mind. However she'd managed it, she'd come here. She hid Shyla in the first secret spot she could find.

Then...

The ribbons around her rippled along his skin like flowing water. The smell of the river, wet grass, and clean stones suffused the space around them. Echoing faintly from far away—over time as much as over distance—her heard her last, hopeless scream. The splash. Icy, cold silence.

"You drowned," he said. She trembled, porcelain limbs rattling quietly, and he firmed his grip, kissing her hair.

"You drowned. Oh, Asya...I'm so, so sorry."

"
He
drowned me," she corrected. "He found me. Struck me with a rock...and held me under."

The ribbons relaxed.

"Then...before I could truly die...he cursed me."

He didn't need to see any more. The Father had already as much as told him the rest.

I think she's my favorite work.

"He's an evil, twisted son-of-a-bitch," Con growled. "I won't let him do it to Shyla. I swear it. I'm going to kill him for hurting you, Asya. For taking her. I will
not
allow him to take your baby's life!"

This brought a strange reaction. She met his eyes, her own narrowed with confusion. He realized, for the first time ever, he'd referred to Shyla as someone else's child.

Because she is. This is her mother.

Her true mother.

He pulled his beautiful doll close again and held her, rocking her in his arms while he silently vowed revenge.

A
sya disappeared into the mists before Conall could fully prepare himself to go. She hadn't abandoned him, though: he sensed it must be her restricted mode of travel. Whatever Fred had made her into, Con imagined she couldn't have a great deal of mobility and freedom. The strings of the marionette might be hidden, but it had taken thirteen years for her to stretch them as far as the graveyard and back to her daughter. Apparently, it had surprised Fred she'd ever made it to Whitetail Knoll at all.

So where has she been all this time?

She'd almost certainly been trapped at the convent, where Father Frederick could watch her and control her. Where he now no doubt had taken Shy.

Conall still limped, leg aching from his knee to deep in his hip, where Fred's hellish thorn branches wrenched it. It made slow work of collecting his old soldier's gear: attaching his old sword bayonet to his shotgun; digging out his web belt and attaching munitions rounds to it once more; donning his old uniform body armor; and finally managing himself into the cab of his truck, wrestling his weapon in beside him. The convent lay more than two hours northeast of the Knoll...and Frederick already had all the lead he required.

What would Con find there? Surely the Little Sisters would take issue when Fred arrived, dragging behind him a struggling adolescent girl. The insane priest may have once convinced them Asya Kariyeva had gone mad, but they would have to see Shyla needed their help. Wouldn't they?

If Fred's been keeping the doll a prisoner at their convent for thirteen years, why didn't anyone notice?

Why didn't they
do
something?

It spread a sour, slimy feeling of dread through his gut. Whatever Fred exposed himself to during the war, it had crawled into his mind like a sickness and made him a monster. Whatever dark magic the priest amassed allowed him to transform a healthy, strong young woman into a phantasm of mis-creation. Asya, at once a work of art, worthy of the collection at the Louvre; at the same time, a patchwork misfit, a golem of her former, living self. She really
had
become his personal Frankenstein's monster.

Might he have done something to the Sisters in those thirteen years, as well? Could the church have become his...
laboratory?

Conall tried to think back to the last time he visited the convent. More than a decade ago. The Little Sisters of Margaret were a tiny, secluded Order. Most of the people in Whitetail Knoll might see but one or two of the women in town on errands once each week, and sometimes not even so often. In fact, in recent years, Fred took it upon himself to deliver many of their supplies when he visited to say Mass. Truth be told...Conall couldn't be sure when he last saw any one of the sisters in person.

The dread in his stomach deepened. He urged the truck on faster, gunning it for all the old machine could take. The entire time, images of disgusting ritual filled his head, Father Frederick bent over his victim, with all manner of dark purpose in his crazed, gleaming eyes.

How,
how
did a friendly parish priest of Whitetail Knoll hide a past this twisted?
What
could drive a man of the cloth to this?

War changes men,
Conall answered himself. He recalled the man he'd been before he'd traveled to the continent, working for the SAS. Before he'd come home injured, to a village which no longer existed, to a family perished in the bombings. War and loss had made him cynical. If not for Shyla, he might have simply become an angry old drunk living alone in a boneyard, shunning all of humanity out of spite.

Con had been a sabotage soldier. His work carried him to supply depots and vehicle bays. He'd blown up machines and fought with guns, knives, or his own bare hands.

Fred...Fred's tour had taken him into dark occult gatherings. Put him in the front lines of fanatical societies, delving into the mysteries of the Beyond. The priest hadn't conceived of the rituals to re-awaken Asya from the brink of death on his own. He'd learned in the company of secret societies and dark magicians no one could bear to talk about.

It warped him,
Conall concluded.
Asya might be his dark creation...but
he
is a true monster.

A true monster with power, however. If Conall had forgotten it for even a moment, he couldn't forget, once he at last arrived at the church.

All hope for the lives of the Little Sisters died out as Con slowed, then finally stopped the truck, in a tiny dirt lot outside the convent of St. Margaret. It appeared smaller now than in his memory. No surprise there, though: Conall had been in the care of the Little Sisters less than a month while he'd recovered and hadn't been back since. Besides the diminished size, however, the church remained the picture-perfect model of a tiny monastery, something which might have belonged in Paris or Italy, made of stone and glass but dropped far out of reach in the quiet, secluded English countryside. There stood the main church with its chapel, a rather tiny sanctuary for all the outward grandeur of the place. Off to the side stretched the convalescent hall, where the Little Sisters cared for the sick. There had been another smaller hall too, once serving as an orphanage, but the last of their poor war-orphaned children had left the church some years ago.

At least, so Father Fred had told him, one afternoon over lemonades. The priest had said it with a pleasant sparkle in his eye. Now Conall had to wonder: had the child
really
gone home to some far-flung relative?

Or did he become a victim to Fred's heinous academia?

Beside the main building stood the cloisters where the sisters lived. In between, a well-tended green yard and a simple garden.

At least, it
had
been a well-tended yard and garden...ten years ago. Now, those gnarled, spidery black brambles overran the area, creeping around the buildings, up into shattered windows and into darkened rooms. The vines grew
huge
—exactly like the ones at the graveyard this morning—and Con had a suspicion they'd been here at the cloisters much, much longer.

Stained-glass windows hung broken in their panes, cracks running through half-decimated scenes from the Gospel. The shards on the ground resembled nothing so much as bright, drunken, and bloodied confetti. Beauty and color wounded, dead upon the ground.

The walls of the convent remained intact, for the most part. Con imagined the stonework proved too staunch for even the dark constructs of these brambles to break down. Sections of roof, however, had fallen inward under the weight of heavy vines. Conall followed the maze of gnarled branches up and up, until finally he took in the sight of the bell tower: the wicked thorns had grown around it to form a cage around the bell, and now it hung in eerie, unmoving silence. Like Asya when she grew still, the bell gave sign of no motion whatsoever. Even the clapper remained frozen, untouched by physical forces. It might have been a photograph, not a real thing at all.

The whole church reflected the same bizarre stillness. It might
all
have been a photograph, drained of color and faded with time. Lacking life, breath, or meaning.

He heard...nothing. No sound at all: not even the chirp of a bird or the rustle of dried grass.
Nothing
here moved.

A flat, cold frisson traveled down the back of his neck. Con brought his shotgun to bear, though he hadn't yet decided his approach, and moved a step back toward his truck.

Then, finally, a brief motion caught his eye. Toward a break between the church buildings, gated by thorns, Con saw it.

A frayed length of silken, gray ribbon. Snagged on the brambles, waving pitifully in the low, sluggish breeze.

The sight of it steeled his courage again. Asya
must
be here, then: it must be where the priest kept her trapped. Perhaps her final resting place.

Now Shyla must be somewhere inside as well...and Conall, the one person who could save her.

With grim resolve, he approached the chapel doors.

The crack of Conall's boot splintering the old, thick wood of the entryway echoed through the cold sanctuary like a gunshot. He brought up his weapon, anticipating attack, and his eyes darted about the space.

It didn't matter. The church lay dark and dusty. Even the light which might have poured in from the holes in the roof failed to touch the interior: black vines and thorns longer than his own leg choked out any sight of day. Con imagined the wreck he'd made of the front entrance didn't even penetrate the darkness effectively. A few wisps and phantoms of old pages, torn from hymnals and catechisms, fluttered up like bats at the disturbance, and the echo of the sound lingered a heartbeat too long. Con cursed himself for neglecting to bring a flashlight.

"Hello?" he called out. He expected no answer. If the Little Sisters were still in residence—still
alive—
this chapel wouldn't be the silent, abandoned tomb it appeared.