The Sphere (32 page)

“I didn’t say the Creator didn’t exist...”

“You did, implicitly. The Creator would never permit horrors like what you’re suggesting. The destruction of his own work! It is unthinkable. There is no room for something like that in a perfect world. The Sphere is sacred, perfect—do you not understand that? Have you all gone suddenly mad?” she says to Sherlock and Morgan. “How can you listen to such rubbish?”

“Rubbish or not, we are in no position to rule out any hypothesis.”

“I agree with Holmes,” says Morgan. “Though there is something that doesn’t quite seem to fit. If this were a case of textual death, it would mean the disappearance of all the members of the role groups that Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Doctor Jekyll belong to... that is, we would have more missing people.”

“I see,” I say thoughtfully. “I could be mistaken.”

“Of course you are!” groans Beatrice.

“I don’t want to throw away the hypothesis,” Sherlock says, looking intently at me. “If they had suffered a permanent death, where could they be?”

“If things were like they are in my world, in the cemetery.”

“In the cemetery?” Morgan asks. “But there’s nothing there. Everyone knows the tombs are empty.”

“Maybe. Yes, according to your rules. But have you opened them recently?”

Sherlock and Morgan exchange a look.

“Agreed. We’ll go today,” says Sherlock. “Tonight we will open up some tombs. After that we’ll investigate who or what has broken the membrane.”

Beatrice faints, which both the detective and Morgan interpret as confirmation of my theory. Things are changing. The worlds are mixing. Beatrice’s role doesn’t include any fainting, and yet, between this and the time that Heathcliff hit her, she’s done it twice now.

––––––––

O
nce midnight passes we get ready to go to the cemetery. Even though we all tell Beatrice to stay home, she insists on coming with us.

“I don’t understand it,” I say quietly to Morgan as we walk down North Street. “Why is she coming if my theory bothers her so much?”

“I think deep down she suspects you might be right.”

“And her Creator?”

“I don’t know where her Creator fits in with all of this, but I think even she is starting to doubt that things are working properly... That, or she’s losing her role.”

The streets are deserted. Even though no one needs to sleep in the Sphere, at night almost all the roles call for staying at home. There are hardly any people out in the streets, and anyone who is out is hanging around the taverns, or the theaters, or dark alleys in bad parts of town. We make it to the cemetery without being spotted, but the next problem is how to distract the gravedigger, whose role calls for patrolling the tombs at night.

“What do you have a gravedigger for if no one dies?” I ask.

“No one dies permanently, but there are plenty of roles with death, and some of them include the burial. You know, with the tears and the laments and all that. So we’ve got a gravedigger,” whispers Morgan.

“And they put them inside the graves?”

“Of course. That’s why we had to wait to come. Once night comes, the people who were buried come out and get ready to do it all over again. Some come out later than others, but by this time of night all the tombs should be empty.”

“I see...”

Per Sherlock’s orders we wait for a while at the cemetery gates. The spires of the cathedral pierce the thick fog and vanish into the sky. The small flash of the gravedigger’s lantern is clearly visible, swaying from side to side as the man walks unhurriedly along. It doesn’t seem like his route has any particular direction.

“The best thing is for me to go in and distract him,” says Sherlock. “I’ll try to draw him off toward the far end of the cemetery. Meanwhile, you inspect all the graves you can—we can’t rely on just opening a few of them.”

Morgan nods, satisfied. We watch as Sherlock walks off with the gravedigger, and then we go inside to the first tomb. Morgan lifts her hands, closes her eyes, and pronounces a few unintelligible words. The huge stone covering the tomb trembles a little and floats upward. I have to pull Beatrice over to hold the light for me so I can see inside while Morgan holds her hand high, keeping the stone up.

“It’s empty,” says Beatrice, letting out a great sigh.

In her relief Beatrice drops the lantern and it shatters against the ground. The grass under our feet catches fire. Morgan quickly puts the stone back on the tomb and lowers her hand to create a layer of frost. Our breath comes quickly and we all glance back at the other end of the cemetery. The gleam of the fire might have caught the gravedigger’s attention. Beatrice is standing stock-still, staring at nothing. I wave my hand in front of her face but she doesn’t even blink. I wonder if Morgan could be right. Is she losing her role?

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B
ack at Beatrice’s house I slump down onto the living room sofa, defeated. The Sphere’s sun is just starting to peek through the windows. We worked all night, despite the incident with the lantern. With no source of light, we had to improvise a little torch that Morgan lit with magic, but luckily the gravedigger didn’t notice anything. We continued inspecting the tombs, and as the night wore on, our moods moved in opposite directions. As Beatrice grew happier and happier, Morgan and I felt more and more disheartened. We checked every single tomb. They were all empty. Sherlock seemed pretty disappointed, too. At the dead end where we are now, finding something in a tomb would have given us some hope. A terrible solution, I know, but at least some kind of hope, something to move the case forward.

“I’ll make tea,” says Beatrice, humming as she disappears into the kitchen.

“It can’t be!” I moan. “I was convinced we’d find something.”

“But you saw—there was nothing!” Morgan answers. “I told you all the tombs here were empty.”

“I guess I owe you all an apology...”

“Don’t be too quick to apologize,” says Sherlock. “I have great hopes in your intuition.”

“You’ve got great hopes in all of her,” murmurs Morgan.

“Pardon?” asks Sherlock.

I don’t understand how he can be so sharp with his observations and still somehow not notice that Morgan is having fun at our expense.

“Nothing... I thought it was a pretty good idea, too.”

“Sherlock!” I leap to my feet. “We have to exhaust all the possibilities... Don’t you think we threw in the towel too soon when we stopped trying to find where they might have hidden the missing people? We were more concerned with figuring out what the winged creatures were and who their leader was than checking all the hiding places. After we visited the monastery we just gave up the search.”

“It’s true,” admits Sherlock. “There are certain private places that we have not gone into... There are also inhabited places we haven’t even considered.”

“I could fly over the entire Sphere right now,” Morgan says, enthused. “From a height it will be easier to identify suspicious places.”

“Good thinking,” says Sherlock.

Beatrice comes in with the tea.

“Now let’s drink a little tea, have a rest, and set aside all these wild ideas about permanent death and the broken membrane. I’ve been thinking: surely the Creator will bring back the missing people; after all they are his children, he would never abandon them. Tomorrow we should all go together to the church to ask forgiveness for our actions and pray for him to restore order,” Beatrice pours the tea daintily and passes around the cups. “If he sees that we are truly repentant everything will go back to normal. Do you promise? Will you go to church with me tomorrow?”

The three of us look around in silence, each of us willing one of the others to answer. Beatrice sighs, makes a face, and grudgingly sits down with her tea. I can see it’s taking a huge effort for her not to get angry, not to curse at us in her mind, but those are her Creator’s precepts.

Morgan gulps down her tea and goes over to open the windows.

“Girl,” she says to Beatrice, “even your windows are narrow.”

Beatrice looks at her scornfully as Morgan takes flight. We watch her disappear, slicing through the airspace of the Sphere.

“I see you took advantage of my absence to come up with another misguided scheme,” Beatrice says, her brow furrowed. “I have no intention of aiding you in your heretical investigations.”

She gestures at Sherlock and me with her cup without paying any attention to the way she’s sloshing tea everywhere. Her movements are radically different from the way she was when I met her. I’m convinced the Sphere is mixing with my world at top speed—these mood swings in Beatrice aren’t normal. Sherlock ignores Beatrice’s remark. He hasn’t called her
lovely lady
in quite a while.

Less than twenty minutes later Morgan flies back into the living room.

“The flight has borne fruit,” she says. “Everything seemed in order; there was nothing unusual about the private gardens. But—of course—I found something suspicious near St Nicholas.”

“I’m warning you, Morgan!” says Beatrice, looking her right in the eye.

“St Nicholas is where the orphanage is; Wuthering Heights is just a bit north of it,” Sherlock explains.

“Heathcliff’s home,” I say.

“If you can even call it a home,” says Beatrice angrily. “My poor little one, how different his life would be down here, in our streets...”

“Sure, in your house,” murmurs Morgan.

Beatrice smashes her cup on the ground.

“That’s enough!” Sherlock shouts. “If you cannot control yourself you can leave the investigation right now.”

Beatrice keeps looking contemptuously at Morgan. I don’t think she even heard Sherlock’s words.

“What did you see, Morgan?” I ask. 

“Heathcliff. Everything was calm, and then I saw him appear at one end of the orphanage garden like he’d risen out of the ground. He just came out of nowhere.”

“Don’t accuse him without any proof. It could have been any other Spherean,” Beatrice says to Sherlock and me. “Do you think you could identify someone from that height? No. The Creator knows you couldn’t. All you can see from above is a head, nothing more. So Morgan saw Heathcliff, or any other Spherean.”

“It was Heathcliff.” Morgan takes a deep breath, trying to hold onto what little patience she has. “It’s like I was telling you. Heathcliff appeared out of nowhere in the orphanage garden. As if he’d come out of the adjacent garden. It was his way of walking, his clothing, his messy black hair. It was him.”

“Sure, out of nowhere...” Beatrice giggles. “It must have been an optical illusion. Surely he was just under a tree and you didn’t see him.”

“We’ll comb the area,” says Sherlock, getting ready to go.

“But...” Beatrice stammers. I can see with my own eyes how her expression shifts from aggression to the gentleness that belongs to her role. Her features relax; even her skin tone changes a little. Once again she’s the sweet, helpless Spherean we all know. “Isn’t walking in the orphanage gardens forbidden? Why go look right there? Why assume Heathcliff is up to no good?”

“We’ll inspect the orphanage and its surroundings. If Heathcliff has nothing to hide, you should have nothing to worry about. You may come with us or stay, as you prefer.”

Beatrice lowers her gaze and follows us to the street as we set off on our mission. To her great pleasure, we spend hours watching buildings, peering over stone walls, and hitting cobblestones and drains to see if any of them move, but find nothing out of the ordinary.

“I think we can count Heathcliff out,” she says with a triumphant smile.

We’re on the terrace outside St Leonard’s chapel, next to the college with the same name.

“If you don’t mind,” Beatrice continues, “I’d like to go into the chapel to thank our Creator for smoothing over this rough patch, and to ask him to protect Heathcliff from future rumors... and to grant you”—she coughs and corrects herself—“to grant
us
the light to see things more clearly.”

“Very well, go on,” says Sherlock, his brow furrowed. He’s thinking hard, going round and round the ways Heathcliff might have gotten away, just like Morgan and I are. “I can feel the prickling that comes before a real discovery,” he says.

“I’m absolutely sure I saw him,” Morgan says.

“I know.”

I look around the small yard. It’s surrounded by old buildings: to my left the chapel, some small houses in front of me, and the college on the other two sides. In the few days before the accident I didn’t get the chance to see this part of St Andrews. There are some really lovely buildings, made of stone, like everything else around here. The college has a wing at the back with big picture windows, and a clock tower with a rounded cupola that comes to a point. I wonder how many children live here. It looks like a boarding school. How many of them must be going through their roles as students without any idea that very near, maybe right here, there are Sphereans being held against their will? The leaves on the trees sing as the wind blows through them. I walk around a little while Morgan and Sherlock wait near the chapel. When I reach the end of the open yard a shiver runs down my spine. I feel the same unpleasant sensation I did at the library, and when we were all together in the church. Someone is watching us. I can feel the weight of someone’s malevolent gaze on me. Very slowly, and with all the discretion I can manage, I look at each of the big windows in turn. It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone behind the bowed, old glass. Suddenly black shadows soar overhead, swoop down, and fly through me like ghosts, letting out a shrill whistle. It feels like a cloud of ice just passed straight through my body. I let out a terrified shriek and Morgan and Sherlock come running.

“What happened?” asks Morgan, agitated.

“I’m not sure. Something went right through me.”

I’m shaking from head to toe. I can barely stand upright.

“But what—what went through you?” asks Sherlock.

“Something black, I couldn’t see it well. It was several
beings
. I don’t know. They went that way,” I point at the corner between the main college building and the low houses.