The Gravedigger's Ball (28 page)

Lynch looked at the captain, who, along with Sandy, nodded in agreement. They all knew Mann was right. They simply needed Lynch’s approval.

“Do it,” Lynch said, and within a half hour, they were ready to hit the Gravedigger where he lived.

*   *   *

Four teams of homicide detectives walked in through Fairgrounds’ various entrances, and did so with a single purpose. Follow the map to wherever it led them, and bring back whatever they found.

Mann and Sandy, joined by two M16-toting officers from the SWAT unit, made up team number 1. Teams 2 through 4 were also composed of detectives and SWAT officers. Between them, they had enough firepower to neutralize whatever they encountered, but as the teams got into position, the cemetery grew ever more still.

Pale yellow light filtered onto the cemetery grounds from the streetlamps along Kelly Drive. A sliver of moon and a smattering of stars shone dimly through the clouds.

The result was a graveyard that was darker than it should be. Occupied police cars sat at every entrance. Crime scene tape blocked off the empty grave where Clarissa’s body had been found. Fallen leaves swirled in the night breeze.

Mann led Sandy and the others to the spot beneath the evergreen tree where Mary Smithson was buried. Sandy shone her flashlight on the tiny grave marker while shaking her head at the irony of the map’s beginning there.

“Team 1 in position,” Mann whispered into his handheld radio as Sandy unfolded the map.

The other three team leaders parroted those words, and flashlight beams stabbed through the darkness as Sandy and Mann began walking through the graveyard.

They followed the winding path laid out on the map, traversing mausoleums, headstones, and other monuments to the dead. When they reached the end point of the map, they looked down into the grave where they’d found Clarissa Bailey. There was nothing there.

For a full minute, they stood, staring into the hole as the darkness wrapped itself around them. Sandy bent down for a closer look, leaning in with her gun in one hand and her flashlight in the other. There was a swishing sound above their heads, almost like that of flapping wings. They all pointed their flashlights skyward in an effort to find out what the sound had come from.

When they didn’t see anything, they returned their attention to the empty grave, and as Mann watched Sandy stare down into the hole, Poe’s words came bubbling to the surface.

“
Deep into that darkness peering
…”

He tried to shake the phrase from his mind, but it was quickly followed by another.

“
Long I stood there, wondering, fearing
…”

Again, they heard the flapping of wings, this time punctuated by the deep croak of the raven. They looked up, all of them, with their weapons and flashlights aimed at the sky. When nothing appeared, Mann wasn’t sure what he’d heard or seen. It was as if Poe’s next line had come to life.

“
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
…”

It was quiet now. The breeze was still, their guns were silent. Everything seemed to stop. Everything, that is, except for Mann’s mind, which recalled the lines he’d looked up that morning while standing near that very spot.

“
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,

“And the only word there spoken was the whispered word ‘Lenore’…”

As soon as the thought of Lenore’s name entered his mind, the raven dove from the sky with a deep, loud croak, and went for Sandy’s face. She rolled left and the bird’s sharp claws ripped through her soft leather jacket, scratching her upper arm. The raven tried to attack again, but Sandy rolled away once more.

A SWAT officer fired three shots in rapid succession, obliterating the bird and the ground beneath it. As blood and black feathers mingled with the dead grass and earth, a flurry of voices flooded their radios and the teams ran toward Mann and Sandy’s position.

When Sandy rose to her feet, Mann took her by the hand. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded. Then she looked at the dead raven and a chill went through her, because every time the raven had showed up that day, a body was not far behind.

By the time the three other teams reached them, Sandy was stepping away from the dead bird, and a quiet rumbling sound was bubbling up from the ground. Every cop in the cemetery listened as the sound grew steadily louder. In mere seconds it reached an ear-splitting volume, and the ground beneath Sandy’s feet gave way. With Mann holding on to her, they both fell into the grave.

By the time the rumbling stopped, they were flat on their backs. They were startled, but neither of them was hurt. Sandy scrambled to her feet and pulled Mann upright. They both reached up so the other officers could grab their hands and pull them out. As they did so, the ground beneath them shook as if a heavy truck had driven by on the road. Suddenly the shaking became more violent. The officers who were standing over the grave fell backward. A chunk of earth came loose beneath Sandy and Mann, opening a hole that tunneled down into the earth.

By the time the ground stopped shaking and the other officers got to their feet, Mann and Sandy were no longer visible. They’d both been swallowed by the grave.

A homicide sergeant who commanded the second of the four teams jumped down into the grave with his back against the side, trying desperately to avoid the hole that had taken Mann and Sandy.

“Charlie!” he called into his handheld radio. “Lieutenant Jackson, come in!”

There was static on the other end. The sergeant leaned forward to look into the hole. He didn’t see any signs of life, but approximately forty feet down he saw a faint blue light that brightened and dimmed, almost like the light from a gas-burning stove. As the ground started to shift again and the members of his team pulled him out of the grave, he felt like he’d just peered into hell.

“Call for an assist,” he said as he caught his breath. “We’ve gotta get them outta there.”

*   *   *

The harrowing slide through the deep, dark hole felt as if it would never end. They tumbled into and against one another for what seemed like forever, hurtling through a rock-strewn nightmare. When they came out the other end, some forty feet under the graveyard’s surface, they slammed into the muddy wall of a much larger tunnel before landing in a bloody heap.

They both lay still for a few seconds, trying to reorient themselves. Once they both realized that they were still alive, they felt along the ground for their weapons. They retrieved them and struggled to their feet, thankful that the muddy wall had helped to break their fall, and anxious about their prospects for getting out.

Mann tried his radio, but it didn’t work beneath the ground. Both of them tried yelling, but they couldn’t hear anyone answer. The noise they made drew interest, however. The blue light from around the bend reflected in the eyes of gathering rats.

They each readied their weapons and checked their injuries. Mann’s left arm was bloody and raw from the slide through the rocky tunnel. Sandy touched her left wrist and winced, realizing then that it might be broken.

“You gonna make it?” Mann asked.

“I’m breathing,” Sandy said. “I’ll be all right.”

That was the optimistic view, because breathing had already become more difficult. The air in the tunnel was nothing like the air aboveground, and though neither of them said it aloud, they knew they couldn’t survive in the tunnel for long.

“Come on,” Mann said, walking cautiously toward the blue light that shone from around the bend.

Sandy followed him as rats scurried and squealed at their feet.

As they got closer to the curve in the tunnel where the blue light shone most brightly, they both held their guns out in front of them, and their breath came faster as adrenaline pumped through their veins.

They rounded the curve with a mixture of fear and excitement as the pulsing blue light shone brighter, and when they walked into the makeshift room that housed the source of the light, they were each shocked into silence by what they saw.

A small wooden chair held a laptop that had been left open. Its blue screen saver was pulsating, and Mann and Sandy both thought the same thing: the laptop’s owner must be close by. They gripped their guns tightly and waited for someone to emerge from the shadows.

Aided by the light from the computer, they surveyed the small room that had been carved out of the dirt. They could see that it was a hub of some sort, with three other tunnels leading out.

“You hear something?” Sandy whispered.

At first he didn’t, but when Mann listened more closely, he could hear the rumbling sound returning. It was coming from somewhere behind them, and it was getting closer. They looked back into the tunnel they’d just come from and saw that its ceiling was giving way.

The collapse was moving quickly in their direction, so Mann grabbed the laptop from the chair and they ran to another tunnel, coughing and squinting from the dust that filled the air. When it settled, they could see that the room they’d just left had been obliterated.

That was when the voice spoke up. “Welcome,” the killer said from somewhere in the darkness.

Both Mann and Sandy aimed their weapons in the direction that the sound had come from.

“Who are you?” Mann asked. “Lance?”

They could almost feel the Gravedigger’s shock when Mann spoke his name. He didn’t speak, but it felt as if he’d stopped breathing. This was no ordinary silence. It was a silence that was filled with grief.

“Lance, I know you’re there,” Mann said.

“Lance is dead!” the Gravedigger shouted from somewhere in the darkness, and then he was silent again.

His voice was still echoing through the tunnel when there was a sudden movement near the wall directly across from them. Both Mann and Sandy fired in that direction. Seconds later the rumbling began anew. Dust shook loose from the ceiling of the tunnel. It felt as if another collapse was imminent.

“What do you want?” Sandy asked.

“You know what I want,” the killer said as his voice moved closer. “I want the secret. That’s why I agreed to do this.”

“Agreed?” Mann said. “Agreed with who?”

“Come and see,” the Gravedigger said, his voice so close they could almost feel him.

Mann raised his weapon to fire, but the Gravedigger knocked it out of his hand. Mann swung and caught him with a right that somehow found its mark in the darkness. Sandy heard the killer stumble, and she shot once in his direction. As the sound of the gunshot echoed through the passage, the rumbling in the tunnel began anew, and the Gravedigger ran away.

Mann and Sandy gave chase, but they were at a distinct disadvantage. The Gravedigger knew these mazelike passageways all too well. Mann and Sandy didn’t know them at all. They banged into the dirt walls as they chased the sounds of footsteps and grunting, but as the killer rounded a curve and ran up a steep incline toward a room with dim yellow light, his silhouette emerged from the shadows. Sandy took aim. The Gravedigger dove toward the lighted room. Sandy fired once, and the killer dropped to his knees. Then he rolled onto his back in agony.

The Gravedigger remembered this scene from his dream. This was different, though. This time it wasn’t the cavalry soldier standing over him and watching him die. This time it was two cops.

He winced as the wound began to throb, but he refused to let pain defeat him. Pushing himself along the tunnel’s dirt floor with his forearms, he struggled to make it to the room. He told himself that if he believed in the secret the bleeding would stop; if he believed in the secret he’d see his wife again; if he believed in the secret his benefactor would fix it, just as he’d said he would.

But as the Gravedigger reached out for the man who’d promised him the world, he only saw a repeat of his dream. This time, when the white-hot light flashed in his face, it wasn’t from the explosion of a bullet. It was the last gasp of a dying mind.

The Gravedigger was dead, and in his place was a man whose grief had given way to rage. Hints of his blond hair showed through the blackness. The contact over one of his eyes was gone. The stains on his blackened teeth were rubbed away, and all that remained was reality.

Lance Griggs smiled as his eyes went vacant. He’d soon be with his wife after all.

“You didn’t have to kill him,” said a robed man who’d appeared, as if from thin air, and was standing in the doorway of the dimly lit room. “He’s not the one you wanted. I am.”

Mann thought he recognized the voice. Sandy didn’t.

“Don’t move,” she said, leveling her weapon as she and Mann walked up the incline.

The man stood there, calmly waiting for them to reach him. When they did, Mann and Sandy looked around and saw that they were in a crypt. Unlike the tunnels, it had walls of marble and concrete. There were metal drawers that looked as if they contained remains. And at the far end of the room, there appeared to be a door.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” Sandy said as she pointed the gun at the man in the robe.

The robed figure complied. Then the light from the room washed over his face, and Charlie Mann and Sandy stared in disbelief.

John Wilkinson stared back at them without a hint of fear or apprehension. “Welcome,” he said with an easy smile. “We were just finishing the ceremony.”

“What ceremony?” Charlie asked. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Then maybe you should meet the other believers.”

Lily Thompkins and Violet Grant emerged from the recesses of the room and stood near a candlelit altar with a yellowing parchment in the middle.

As Mann and Sandy watched, Lenore Wilkinson emerged from the shadows as well. John was about to walk back toward the altar when Sandy raised her gun.

“Stop right there!” she shouted. “Nobody moves unless I say so.”

John’s face creased in a relaxed smile. “I’m afraid you’re not in charge, Lieutenant Jackson. Now that Lenore has deciphered Poe’s secret, we answer to a higher authority. That’s what the cryptogram was about. It’s what the map was about. It was all for this time and this place. After a year of tunneling and searching for the truth, we finally found it here, and Lenore’s gift was the key to it all.”