The Diviners (66 page)

“Let’s hurry,” she said. As they came down the stairs, one gave way, and Jericho nearly plummeted through. Evie had to yank him back to his feet. They returned to the ballroom and Evie gasped. The chairs had been arranged in a circle, as they had been at Brethren.

“Jericho,” Evie whispered, backing out of the room.

“
Naughty John, Naughty John does his work with his apron on,
” Jericho sang and laughed.

“Jericho, that isn’t funny.”

He had the strangest smile. “Do you hear that music?”

Evie cocked her head, listening, but this time she heard nothing but the groans and creaks of the old house. “No.”

“It’s like a party!” Jericho smiled happily. “Let’s dance. You love to dance, don’t you, Evie?” He swept her into his arms, turning her around so quickly she felt dizzy.

“Jericho, what’s the matter with you?” Evie said, and then she remembered: the puff of dust from the rosette. The powerful plants the Brethren used to make their wine and smoke. Jericho was under its effects now.

“I’ve always wanted to dance with you,” he murmured, nuzzling his face against her neck. “I’ve watched you, you know. When you didn’t think anyone was looking.” He brought his mouth to her ear. His breath was warm; it made her skin tingle. “I’ve thought about you, late at night. So many nights…”

She had to get him out of the house; that was the thing. She’d misjudged this place. It was a coconspirator, every bit as formidable as John Hobbes. It would do anything to protect him. “And dance we will,” Evie said, pushing away from Jericho. “But not here.”

“Yes. Here,” he said, pulling her close again, pressing her against him. The walls sighed, she could swear, and from somewhere came a dreadful cackling.

“I know a better spot! This way,” Evie said, dragging Jericho toward the kitchen. She had to get him out the door, out into the fresh air. Then she could toss a lit match into the house and run with Jericho as far away as they could get.

“Where are you taking me?” Jericho asked dreamily.

“Almost there,” Evie said, and though she tried to sound offhand, her voice shook. As if it could sense her plan, the door slammed shut.

“No!” Evie pulled on the handle, turning it wildly, but it
wouldn’t budge, not even when she threw herself against the door again and again. They were trapped. The house would not let them go.

Jericho held out his hand. “Dance with me,” he said hoarsely.

“Jericho, we have to leave. Now. Do you understand?”

“I only understand that I want you.”

The smell of kerosene was everywhere. It wouldn’t take much to send the whole thing up in a fireball with the two of them inside. Fine. If they couldn’t get out this way, she’d try another—pry the shutters off a window, hurl a chair against a lock, whatever it took to get out.

Evie grabbed Jericho’s outstretched hand and dragged him along behind her. He was cackling; the sound of it traveled up her spine, made her want to run and leave everything—including him—behind. She’d reached the front door when she heard something from outside. Was someone coming up the street? If she shouted, would they hear her? She raced to the windows beside the front door, ready to pry the wood off with her bare hands if need be.

Whistling. The person coming up the street was whistling that old familiar tune. Goose bumps prickled along her arms.

“He’s coming. We have to hide.”

Her eyes darting wildly, Evie searched the room, twirling around madly. Where? Where could they hide? What if even now Naughty John was coming home, bringing his last offering with him? Could Evie find it within herself to lie in wait, to strike before he could finish his gruesome task? All she needed was to wait him out and strike before the comet passed. Then it would be over for John Hobbes. She would do it. She had to do it. But where to hide? Evie’s flashlight traveled over glistening walls thick with oozing slime.

The whistle was coming closer.

“Can’t you hear them?” Jericho murmured. “They’re here. They’re waiting.”

Jericho. She had to shut him up. There was a small room off to the left. Evie pushed him toward it. “In you go,” she said. Jericho turned the door handle and the floor gave way beneath him. He disappeared into blackness.

“Jericho! Jericho!” Evie yelled into the dark hole in the floor. There was no response. Did the trap open into the cellar, as the chute had? Could he be there now, on the dirt floor, with a broken leg or a dashed skull? But where was the entrance? She ran into the large foyer again and paused, listening. The whistling had stopped. Her heart beat so hard against the cage of her ribs that she thought they would break from the pressure. Her throat was too dry to allow her to swallow.
Move, Evie
, she told herself, but she was paralyzed with fear. Hopelessness weighted her to the spot. How could she possibly win against such unspeakable evil? Why, if she gave up now, it would be over quickly, and she wouldn’t be around to watch the world burn. The house sighed and purred around her, as if murmuring its accord.

And then suddenly she saw it: Under the staircase was a door that hadn’t been there before. It was slick with wet, gleaming like bone in the dark.

“Jericho!” she called again. “I’m coming after you. Don’t move.”

The house took a breath and held it. A shadow passed before the front windows, quick as a bird’s wing. He was home. He was coming. With a gasp, Evie rushed for the cellar door. The knob turned easily. The door swung open. There was nowhere to go but down, into the depths of Naughty John’s killing ground.

It was pitch-black on the stairs. Evie slid her palms down the walls as she felt for the edge of each step. The plaster was warm to
the touch, damp and sticky. Her heartbeat was quick as a bird’s; her head thudded with the pulse of her blood. The house had gone quiet again, and she found that more frightening than the whistling. She hoped Jericho wasn’t hurt. She willed herself to keep going until she reached the basement floor at last. It was unbearably hot. The dirt floor felt soft, sodden under her feet. It warmed the soles of her shoes, forcing her to move. Evie took small, tentative steps. Which way to go? Where was John Hobbes? Should she turn on her flashlight? Or was she safer cloaked in the gloom? What was out there in the vast, unknowable dark?

The walls were breathing.
Oh, god.
She could hear them! She could stand the dark no longer. Shaking, she clicked on the flashlight.

From somewhere above her, she heard the soft, high whistle of a nursery song. But this song didn’t belong in any nursery.

John Hobbes’s voice rang out. “ ‘The Lord spake as if with the tongues of a thousand angels. All that remained was the eleventh offering, the Marriage of the Beast and the Woman Clothed in the Sun….’ I know you’re here, Lady Sun. I can feel you.”

Evie’s mind struggled to understand. He’d called her Lady Sun. Her. Lady Sun. The Woman Clothed in the Sun. Naughty John was home. He was home and ready to complete his transformation. He was looking for her—for
her
! Evie willed herself to keep going, bouncing the light of her flashlight around the room, looking for Jericho. She wished she were far away from here—at a nightclub or the Bennington or even in the museum’s dull library. She had been foolish to think that she could take on a killer, a ghost, the Beast himself.

Above her, the whistling stopped and the song began:
“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones. Sells ’em off for a coupla stones….”

Fear thinned Evie’s reason to a useless shaving of itself. She had to get out. Get away. She raced for the rickety steps. She didn’t care—she’d take her chances. Run up and out. Get help. Scream her head off till all of New York heard and came. But no—Jericho. She had to find Jericho first. Maybe he’d fallen through and found a way out. She told herself this as she willed her legs forward. Why, even now he was probably running for help, and any moment the door would crash down as the police swarmed this godforsaken lair. Yes, any moment now, she’d hear Jericho’s voice shouting her name: “Evie! Evie! You’re safe. Come out!” Lost to her fear, Evie started to giggle and clamped a hand over her mouth.

Above her head, the floorboards creaked. Her heart doubled its rhythm. As damp as the room was, her throat was as dry as chalk, and she gagged. The footsteps upstairs thudded with a deliberateness at odds with the chaos raging in her blood.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The shadows of two shoes appeared along the thin crack under the door at the top of the stairs.

Sharp, one-word impressions and commands fired in Evie’s mind:
Him. Here. Hide. Where? Go. Now. Where? Coming. Coming. Down. Hide. Where?

She remembered the draft of air she’d felt when she’d come to the house with Mabel, and she sprinted back into the dark cellar and put her hand up, hoping to find it again. A cool draft kissed her palm. She followed it to the far wall, behind the furnace. She might have missed the hidden door entirely if she hadn’t put out a hand and felt the crack. She patted around the seam and choked back a sob when she could find no lock or handle, no way in.

The cellar door groaned open. Footsteps on the stairs now.

And then the door in front of her released of its own accord. Light shone from inside. Moonlight, Evie realized. It was a way out. It had to be a way out.

Evie passed through a narrow vestibule, which seemed to open out into a larger chamber. The light, she realized, came from an opening far above, a small window that looked out on the night sky.
The missing chimney
, she thought, and shuddered. The room itself had no windows and no door, except for the passage in. It was oddly shaped, like a star. In one corner sat an old iron brazier. A painted pentacle took up the entire floor. A grand altar carved with a comet had been placed at the very center of the pentacle. She turned slowly, taking in the whole of the room. The walls had been painted with symbols—a symbol for each of the eleven offerings, each of the murders.

A terrible, knowing cold came over her. How could she have been so stupid? How many times had she heard the phrase and thought nothing of it? It was in the Book of the Brethren, and in Ida Knowles’s diary. She’d heard Pastor Algoode say it when she was under. The new Brethren disciples had preached it outside the fairgrounds. The rotted houses in the old camp on the hill had been painted with exactly the same symbols.

Prepare ye the walls of your houses….

It wasn’t a pendant or a book or any other object keeping John Hobbes alive. It was a place. A room.
This
room.

The Book of the Brethren lay on the altar, opened to the page for the eleventh offering. Evie stared at the drawing of the beautiful girl dressed in a shimmering gown of gold, an all-seeing eye painted on her forehead and outstretched palms. Her chest was open and her heart was in the hands of the Beast.

This was his true lair, then. The reason he’d had Mary White keep the house ready for him. And now she had walked right into it, into the belly of the Beast. She had to get out of there at once. If she had to, she’d throw a match and send Naughty John back to whatever hell would have him.

From deep in the cellar, she heard him singing, “
Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on.
”

Evie’s fingers fumbled for the matches in her pocket. Yes, she’d throw the match and run. Panic made her thoughts cloudy. Desperate. She sank to her haunches like an animal who knows it’s cornered by the wolf.

Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint, whatever you do, don’t faint, old girl….

The wolf was at the door. His shadow spilled into the room, taking it over. With shaking fingers, Evie lit a match and tossed it against shadow and air, watching the flame fizzle into smoke. She lit another and another, all reason lost now, the whole book of matches reduced to nubs. And despite her warnings, Evie’s mind did not cooperate. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slipped to the ground, unconscious.

Stars. That’s what Evie saw first. Above her, the inky sky twinkled with the false hope of stars. Her head ached where she’d hit it on the floor. Her mouth tasted of blood.

“Ah. You’re awake,” the voice said. “Good.”

Her vision blurred for a second, then focused on the sight of John Hobbes. He was a big man with a thick mustache. He’d removed his shirt, and she saw the brands covering his chest, back, and arms, his body a nightmarish tapestry.
Anoint thy flesh….

The eyes were the same ones she’d seen before: cold and blue.

“Very kind of you to come to me. Saved me the trouble of coming for you.” He shimmered before her like candle wax, an unstable thing, but still with the capacity to burn.

“Jericho!” Evie shouted. “Jericho!”

Naughty John smiled. “Your companion is not well at present,” he said, and Evie was afraid to ask what that meant.

Evie sat up and was surprised to see that she could do so freely.

“What would be the point in restraints?” he said, as if he could read her thoughts.

Evie was numb with fear. “Why?” she asked. It was all she could manage; the terror had reduced her words.

“Why?” John Hobbes repeated, as if she were an insolent child and he her annoyed but patient teacher. “Why should I let this world go on? It is filled with sin and vice and all manner of corruption. It requires a new god to lead it, Lady Sun.”