The Broken Ones (48 page)

A boy, Haig had said. An infant boy. He’d lived two days.

Oscar felt eyes on him and looked up.

Across the room, the dead youth stood beneath a painting of Monreale Cathedral and its asymmetrical towers. The house was silent.

“Do you ever sleep?” Oscar asked. “Do you get time off?”

The boy licked dry, pale lips. The holes where his eyes should be seemed to shift and curl. Oscar looked away. How did it work? he wondered. Did Sandro now find himself standing over a newborn infant? Would that child—maybe a little boy—grow up with a proud, stern-faced man watching over him?

Oscar looked across the shadowy room to the dead boy.

“What happens when I die?” Oscar asked. “Are you freed then?”

The boy gave Oscar a small shrug, and his dark nylon coat lifted silently, too big on his narrow shoulders. He put his hand to his chest.

Something tapped the window behind Oscar and he turned.

There was nothing outside. He lifted the lantern to the window and stared at his own ghostly reflection. A moth, perhaps, drawn to the light.

He carried the lantern down a hall lined with vibrant wallpaper to a set of stairs and climbed.

His parents’ bedroom was small. “Big enough for sleeping,” they had said. Vedetta’s duchess was beneath the window where it had always been, and her crystal perfume bottles were neatly dusted. Oscar opened the wardrobe and looked at his father’s clothes, hanging ironed and neat on hangers. He’d have to decide what to do with them: which to sell, which to gift, which to keep. At the back, crinkled plastic reflected the lantern glow. Sandro’s police uniform. On the shelf above the rail was a cardboard box. Oscar pulled it down and put it on the bed. Inside were his father’s visored officer’s cap, a neatly curled belt, and a set of epaulettes sealed in cling wrap. And one more item. A little key ring, with two mismatching keys.

Movement in the doorway made him jump.

The dead boy stood there. He wasn’t watching Oscar. He was looking across the bed and out the window.

Oscar followed his sightless gaze.

The window was a blank eye behind floral curtains. Nothing moved.

“What?” Oscar asked, looking at the boy.

He bit his pale lips and raised a hand—a signal for attention.

Oscar picked the keys from the box. He knew what they were for.

In the upstairs hallway was a polished mahogany writing desk: turned legs, two drawer stays with brass handles on the front, a large inlaid drop lid that would swing down to reveal a green leather writing pad, a clever stack of pigeonholes, stationery shelves, and miniature drawers. But from the moment he set foot in this house Oscar had been forbidden to touch the desk, which was kept locked by the smaller of the two keys now in his hand.

Oscar set the lantern on the floor and slid the key into the desk’s brass lockplate. He looked behind him. The dead boy stood at the top of the stairs. His feet shifted silently. Seeing that Oscar was looking at him, he sharply raised both pale hands and waved them anxiously.

“I’m busy,” Oscar said. He’d been waiting thirty years for this.

He pulled out the desk’s two velvet-topped stays, turned the key, and dropped the lid down.

There were surprisingly few items. Good paper for thank-you notes. A fountain pen and a silver letter opener. A small brass abacus that Sandro had actually used. And a dozen envelopes of various sizes, stacked on their ends in one of the pigeonholes. Half were unsealed; half had been neatly sliced open along their top edge. Oscar flicked through them. The largest was marked “Wills, Copy.” He opened it. Inside were two nearly identical four-page documents: one his mother’s, one Sandro’s. It took Oscar just a moment to find the clause that said if both his parents were dead the estate was to go to him. He felt hollow.

Marriage certificate. The death certificates of Vedetta’s parents and Sandro’s parents. On a yellowing police-service letterhead, Sandro’s formal letter of appointment as a sworn officer. Another death certificate: Primo Alessandro Mariani. Age at death: two days. In the same envelope, a receipt from a funeral home, including payment in advance for reinterment upon his mother’s death. The infant was buried with Vedetta.

They hadn’t told him.

The last envelope was marked in Sandro’s hand: “Adoption.”

Oscar held it loosely in his fingers and slipped it back among the others.

The air shifted.

He looked across to the dead boy. He was still at the top of the stairs, staring down into darkness. A stronger breeze tugged from the stairwell.

A door had been opened down there.

Oscar felt the hairs on his neck rise. The boy’s jaw was set tight, his slight frame tense. He suddenly lifted his colorless, narrow face to Oscar and pointed down the stairs.

Oscar carefully removed the key from the desk and quietly screwed down the wick of the lantern. Darkness squeezed in with every turn until the lantern was out. Then he remembered that he had no weapon.

But he had the key ring. The second key was for Sandro’s gun safe, in the basement.

To get there he had to go downstairs.

The light coming in through the windows was gossamer thin. He could make out the rectangles of doorframes, the vertical teeth of banisters, the sallow triangle of the dead boy’s face. He was mouthing something, but Oscar couldn’t tell what.

Oscar went to the top of the carpeted stairs and looked down into the living room. Oblongs of faint gray light fell over the furniture, picking out the curves of chair arms and the angles of bookshelves but leaving most of the room in pitch darkness. The shadows moved. Curtains were blowing. A door banged, and Oscar dropped to a crouch. He watched. The shadows stopped moving. Whatever door had opened was now shut.

The dead boy was no longer behind him. He was downstairs, his back to Oscar, looking.

Oscar crept down one tread at a time, willing his irises to open wider to counter the heavy darkness. The stairs creaked under their carpet pelt, and Oscar grimaced. Across the lounge room was the dining room, the kitchen, and on the far wall the stairs to the basement. Thirty feet through darkness.

Oscar felt the hairs on his scalp and arms rise. How long would it take to cross to the kitchen? Six seconds? Five? If he ran fast enough and didn’t hit any furniture, maybe—

Scrape
.

Something moved in the deep shadows below.

The dead boy whirled and turned his white face to Oscar, raised his arms, and dropped them hard.

Without thinking, Oscar ducked.

Something huge streaked over his head and smashed into the wall. Air flumed around his head and a charnel-house stink assaulted his nostrils.

“Fuck!”

Oscar lost his footing and tumbled down the remaining stairs. He fell on his face, sprawled on the carpet runner.

Foul wind poured like a wave over his face, and a huge mass punched through the air above him. Something sharp nicked into his shoulder, tracing a bright line of pain. There was a gigantic whuffing of air, then ahead of him the brass chandelier dropped to the dining table with a deafening crash.

Oscar got to hands and knees and scrambled to the dining table, hurling chairs out of his way. Behind him, the air shook again, and something weighty landed on the floor. He turned to see between the table and chair legs a large hunch of darkness, shifting and moving inhumanly toward him. Then a leathery scrape as it gripped timber, and one of the chairs was flung across the room, shattering on a wall.

Oscar glanced ahead and saw the dead boy crouched in front of him, frantically waving him foward. Oscar felt the air pulse behind him and heard a mighty suck of wind. He fumbled between the table’s end legs and felt a razor nick in his ankle. He jerked his leg away and heard hard, sharp things tear carpet.

There were two creatures. Into his mind flashed the Burney Relief and the winged, clawfooted woman flanked by lean cats and two huge, death-eyed owls.

Oscar got to his stockinged feet and ran toward the dead boy.

A great shadow detached from the darkness above and barreled down at him. He had just a moment to see it grow as two enormous capelike wings arced high. He threw himself behind the island bench as a great chunk of painted wood exploded from its corner, splintering out across the floor. Air buffeted Oscar as he flung his hands over his head and curled; the massive shape swept past him, and he heard the crackle of dry feathers slapping the laminated bench top. A graveyard stench dusted the air, and the creature’s momentum carried it on into darkness. Furniture was tossed aside, torn and snapped.

Oscar looked behind him. The boy stood at the top of the basement stairs, gesturing urgently for Oscar to follow. Oscar didn’t want to move—there was no cover between the bench and the stairs. He could feel warm liquid dripping down inside his shirt—the cuts stung like razor slashes. The dead boy waved sharply—now! Oscar rolled to his
feet and ran in a crouch, his eyes on the boy’s wan face. Glass splinters stabbed through his socks and into his feet. He ignored the pain.

The boy’s black, blank eyes seemed to widen, and he threw his hands to the floor. Oscar let himself drop and felt fetid air blast past him. Hair was torn from his head, and new strips of ice-sharp pain flared across his rib cage. The crockery cupboard above him burst apart as a huge gray shadow slammed into it—glass and shards of timber flew like shrapnel, and the air was thrashed in huge, violent scoops.

Oscar dived through the door and down the basement stairs. His knee twisted painfully as he whirled to the door—he took its painted edge and slammed it shut just as something smashed at the other side, and Oscar heard the timbers of the jamb squeal in protest. He reached up and rammed the barrel bolt home.
Smash!
The timber in the middle of the door began to splinter. He turned and felt his bad knee fail, and he slid on his backside down the stairs, each tread punching painfully into the small of his back. He landed in a heap at the bottom just as a third blow smashed at the door, and he heard the screws that secured the barrel bolt ping away into the darkness like bullets.

And bullets were what he needed. He limped across the wet floor toward the workbench. Above it was the padlocked metal gun cabinet. He fumbled in his pocket for the key.

Smash!
The door at the top of the stairs shook on its hinges and more strained metal squealed. Oscar looked around but couldn’t see the dead boy. He felt with one hand for the padlock and jabbed at it with the key. It wouldn’t go in.

Smash-smash!
Twin blows against the door, and a loud crackle of failing, splitting timber.

Oscar flipped the key, and it slipped into the lock. He twisted hard and the hasp snapped out. He wrenched the metal door open. He knew what was in there: the two .22 rifles that he and Sandro used to take rabbit-shooting—the Weatherby and the Marlin. Scopes. Magazines. Cardboard boxes of cartridges.

SMASH! CRASH!
The door flung open, and the air in the basement shuddered. Oscar’s fingers closed on a rifle, a magazine, a box of shells. He felt rather than saw what was coming and dropped to the floor just as everything on the workbench was swept aside by a vicious wave, and there was a piercing shriek as sharp claws scraped across
metal and the gun cabinet was wrenched from the wall to clang loudly on the floor.

As Oscar ran across the basement, he realized with dismay that the box of cartridges he clutched in his hand seemed to be getting lighter, and he heard the brassy tinkle as shells fell to the floor. He gripped it harder and sprinted for the tiny bathroom on the other side. The dead boy was beside its door, pinwheeling his arms. Oscar felt the air behind him charge with a building rush as things gathered momentum and streaked toward him. He dived into the tiny cubicle, smacking his head painfully on the porcelain—a dazzling white cloud of sparks roiled behind his eyes. He swung one leg and kicked the door closed behind him, then braced it shut with the other just as the creature smashed into it.

CRASH!
A powerful shock of impact jolted up Oscar’s leg. He put his bleeding shoulder against the porcelain pedestal and braced both feet on the door.

CRASH!
Splinters of wood struck his face; his legs shuddered and fresh pain erupted from his twisted knee. He rolled the rifle onto his chest and fumbled for the magazine, and with shaking fingers began to feed in cartridges. He realized that from the whole box he had only six in his palm.

CRASH!
An ugly nova of gray half-light appeared in the middle of the door. Oscar fed two more shells into the clip. His shoulder was growing ice-cold.

The crashing stopped. Silence. His trembling fingers slipped the last cartridge into the magazine.

BANG!
The timber of the door quaked under a massive impact, and the whole toilet room shuddered. Grenades of pain went off in Oscar’s knees, shoulder, neck. And by the murky trickle of light coming through the new hole in the door he saw three claws as large as daggers spear through the timber and begin to tear.

“Fuck off!” Oscar shouted.

The claw wrenched away a chunk of door paneling as large as a bread plate and Oscar saw a curve of horn as large as a man’s shoe slide slyly into the new gap. Its beak. Oscar felt his stomach go to water. The room went black and the door timber screamed and splintered as the beak bit and twisted.

Oscar slammed the magazine home, chambered a round, pointed
the barrel at the widening hole, and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening in the small space, but not as loud as the awful, alien howl from the other side—a piercing sound like a thousand fingernails across blackboards. He chambered another round and fired again. Another shriek, as shrill as shearing metal. His ears rang. He chambered another round.

An eye appeared in the hole—a sulfur-yellow disk with a black and lifeless oil pool at its center. Oscar aimed from the hip and fired. He heard the creature’s head snap to the side. He slid the bolt and fired one more time through the door. There was a final, frustrated screech as loud as a braking train. A massive flurry of air. Silence.