Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

He looked magnificent.

He smoothed his long hair and walked down the hall. He had seen a coin purse on the chimneypiece and he found it again. He weighed it in the palm of his hand before slipping it into his pocket. He picked up the knife from the chair in the parlor and took it with him. He did not say good-bye to Elizabeth. If the homeowner chose to be rude and uncommunicative, Jack could match him. He put the knife in his medical bag on the floor and took a tall hat from the rack by the front door. He quietly snicked back the latch and opened the door, stood for a moment in the stream of sunlight that rushed in to greet him, then stepped outside and pulled the red door almost shut behind him. He took the four steps along the path in the little front garden, swinging his black leather bag by the handle, and went out by the gate. He passed a little girl playing across the lane. She stuck her tongue out at him and he wondered how it would look lined up next to the other tongues he had nailed to the mantel in Elizabeth’s parlor. But he smiled at the ill-mannered little girl and tipped his hat to the old lady he saw peering out the window next door. He walked away down the lane and turned the corner, and was gone.

Day put his hands up. It was a universal gesture, an automatic reaction to the gun pointed at him. Adrian March moved backward a step. His foot brushed up against a skull, and it rolled across the ground toward Day, zigzagging as its cheekbones took its weight, first left, then right, then left again. It bumped against the toe of Day’s shoe and he looked down. It was very small, a child’s skull, two front teeth missing and an open hole at the top of the head. Some sort of crushing blow had shattered the bone, exposing the brain and ending a life much too early. Day looked back up at March and took a deep breath. The air was damp and musty.

“I don’t understand, Adrian. What is this?”

March smiled, a wry expression with no amusement in it. He glanced down at the revolver as if surprised to find it in his hand. “This isn’t, uh. . Yes, well.” He took his finger out of the trigger guard and slipped the revolver into the pocket of his jacket. “I’m not going to shoot you, Walter. That was never. . Just didn’t want you to shoot me.”

Day lowered his hands but stayed where he was, his back to the empty alcove in the tunnel wall, the shiny new shackles waiting patiently in the darkness behind him. “Why would I shoot you?”

“Because it’s time I told you a thing or two, and I feel fairly sure you won’t like hearing about some of it. At least, not at first. But I want you to listen to me and weigh what I have to say. Weigh it carefully and consider who it is you’re talking to. You know me well.”

“And you should know that you can talk to me without a gun.”

“You might still try to arrest me,” March said. “That will be harder to do if I have your Colt.”

“Adrian? You know what’s going on down here, don’t you? These catacombs have been made over into a prison of some sort. A dungeon. You had something to do with that.” He kept his voice flat. It wasn’t a question.

Clearly Adrian March was involved in something terrible and dangerous.

“Not just me,” March said. “There are many of us.”

“All morning you’ve tried to stall the manhunt. You didn’t want me to come down here.”

“I did, but I wanted to prepare you for this first. I wish you’d listened to me.”

“Are those shackles for me, then? Are you going to lock me up down here?”

Day had a brief vision of his unborn child as an adult, squatting in a poorhouse somewhere, with no knowledge of his missing father. It was a surprising vision, and it awakened an emotion in Day that he didn’t recognize.

“If I were going to leave you down here, Walter, I wouldn’t have put the revolver away. I’d like you to listen to what I have to say and see what I have to show you. And then we’ll go up again, out of here, and you can arrest me if you want to. But I think you’ll choose to join us. I’ve always wanted you to join us. I’ve only been waiting for the right time to approach you, and I thought perhaps the prison escape might help me introduce the subject.”

“What subject? And why now?”

“Because you have a child on the way,” March said. “You are now responsible for the life of an innocent. It’s an experience that changes a man, changes the way a man thinks. If today had gone the way I’d planned, I would have told you about us over a good meal and a bottle of red wine. I even sent a gift to your home. I wanted you to have questions and to ask me about these things in an atmosphere of fellowship and trust. There are so many things I could have-”

“You said ‘us.’ Who do you mean? Wait. Never mind. First tell me what this is.” Day waved his hand to indicate the shallow cave behind him, then the entire length of the tunnel, all of the city, and everything that had happened over the past few hours.

“Come over here,” March said. He led the way down the tunnel and pointed to another alcove, marked only by a vague area of darker black. “Shine your candle in there.”

Day did as he was told and thrust his arm into the gloom of the recess, illuminating it with his fresh candle. It was identical to the one next to it: an iron ring in the floor, chains and shackles against the back wall. Day turned and approached the tunnel wall across from the alcove. There was another haphazard pile of bones, stacked high to a point under the ceiling, spreading out across the floor so that it all resembled some morbid pyramid.

March had already moved farther down the length of the tunnel. He pointed at another inky blotch on the wall.

“And there,” he said.

Day shone the candle’s flame into this third alcove. Again, the ring, the chains, the shackles. And across from it all, the pile of old bones.

“How many of these are there? What are they for?”

“There are eight of them,” March said. “Eight so far. There’s room here for more, but the work has been slow. Five of them are clustered here, and there are three more in another section of the catacombs.”

Day tipped his candle and let wax drip onto the shelf next to the shackles. He pushed the bottom of the candle into the wax and held it there for a moment until the wax had cooled enough to hold the candle upright. He turned back to March, his hands free, and began to calculate the distance between them. He was in the center of the makeshift cell and March was outside in the tunnel. There were perhaps six or seven feet between them. How quickly would March be able to get the revolver out of his pocket? How fast were the old man’s reflexes?

“Do you mind if I reach for my flask?” Day said. “It’s here in this pocket.”

“Of course. By all means.”

Day took out the flask and poured an ounce of brandy into his mouth. He swallowed and held the flask out to March, but his former mentor shook his head and smiled.

“No, thank you,” March said. “I believe I’ll stay right here, out of your reach.”

“Suit yourself.” Day corked the flask and slipped it back into his pocket.

“We are called the Karstphanomen,” March said. “And we have existed for many decades. This”-he held his hands out in the air, far apart from each other-“this is all ours. Miles and miles of tunnels and caverns and abandoned buildings, waterways and burial grounds and lost treasure troves. We own it all.”

“You live underground? Like rats?”

“Of course not. I live in my home in Acton. You’ve been there. You’ve supped with my wife and me. No, Walter, this place is where we do our work.”