Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

“So he stored his stage equipment in the sub-basement?”

“No. My family hid it there.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Because much of the equipment was dangerous.”

“But while you were exploring the room, you didn’t know that.”

“No. Not at first.”

“At first?”

“Some of the devices looked strange. Cruel. We were young, we didn’t fully understand…” Pendergast hesitated.

“What happened next?” Glinn asked gently.

“In the back, we found a large box.”

“Describe it.”

“Very large-almost the size of a small room itself-but portable. It was garish. Red and gold. The face of a demon was painted on its side. There were words above the face.”

“What did the words say?”

“‘The Doorway to Hell.’”

Pendergast was trembling slightly now, and Glinn let some more time pass before speaking again. “Did the box have an entrance?”

“Yes.”

“And you went inside.”

“Yes. No.”

“You mean, Diogenes went first?”

“Yes.”

“Willingly?”

Another long pause. “No.”

“You goaded him,” Glinn said.

“That, and…” Pendergast stopped once more.

“You used force?”

“Yes.”

Glinn now kept utterly still. He did not allow even the slightest squeak of the wheelchair to break the tense atmosphere.

“Why?”

“He had been sarcastic, as usual. I was angry with him. If there was something a little frightening… I wanted him to go first.”

“So Diogenes crawled inside. And you followed him.”

“Yes.”

“What did you find?”

Pendergast’s mouth worked, but it was some time before the words emerged. “A ladder. Leading up to a crawl space above.”

“Describe it.”

“Dark. Stifling. Photographs on the walls.”

“Go on.”

“There was a porthole in the rear wall, leading into another room. Diogenes went first.”

Watching Pendergast, Glinn hesitated, then said, “You made him go first?”

“Yes.”

“And you followed.”

“I… I was about to.”

“What stopped you?”

Pendergast gave a sudden, spasmodic twitch, but did not answer.

“What stopped you?” Glinn pressed suddenly.

“The show began. Inside the box. Inside, where Diogenes was.”

“A show of Comstock’s devising?”

“Yes.”

“What was its purpose?”

Another twitch. “To frighten someone to death.”

Glinn leaned back slowly in his wheelchair. He had, as part of his research, studied Pendergast’s ancestry, and among his many colorful antecedents Comstock stood out. He had been the agent’s great-grand-uncle, in his youth a famed magician, mesmerist, and creator of illusions. As he grew old, however, he became increasingly bitter and misanthropic. Like so many of his relatives, he ended his days in an asylum.

So this was where Comstock’s madness had led.

“Tell me how it began,” he said.

“I don’t know. The floor tilted or collapsed beneath Diogenes. He fell into a lower chamber.”

“Deeper into the box?”

“Yes, back down to the first level. That was where the… show took place.”

“Describe it,” Glinn said.

Suddenly Pendergast moaned-a moan of such anguish, such long-repressed suffering, that Glinn was for a moment left speechless.

“Describe it,” he urged again as soon as he could speak.

“I only had a glimpse, I didn’t really see it. And then… they closed around me.”

“They?”

“Mechanisms. Driven by secret springs. One behind me, shutting off escape. Another that locked Diogenes inside the inner chamber.”

Pendergast fell silent again. The pillow beneath his head was now soaked in perspiration.

“But for a moment… you saw what Diogenes saw.”

Pendergast lay still. Then-very slowly-he inclined his head. “Only for a moment. But I heard it all. All of it.”

“What was it?”

“A magic-lantern show,” Pendergast whispered. “A phantasmagoria. Operated by voltaic cell. It was… Comstock’s specialty.”

Glinn nodded. He knew something of this. Magic-lanterns were devices that passed light through sheets of glass onto which images had been etched. Projected onto a slowly rotating wall with uneven surfaces to reinforce the illusion, and supplemented by sinister music and repetitious voices, it was the nineteenth-century equivalent of the horror movie.

“Well then, what did you see?”

Abruptly the agent leaped from the couch, suddenly full of feverish action. He paced the room, hands clenching and unclenching. Then he turned toward Glinn. “I beg you, do not ask me that.”

He mastered himself with a supreme effort, still pacing the room like a caged beast.

“Go on, please,” said Glinn tonelessly.

“Diogenes shrieked and screamed from within the inner chamber. Again and again… and again. I heard a terrible scrabbling as he tried to claw his way out-I could hear his nails breaking. Then there was a long silence… And then-I don’t know how much later-I heard the shot.”

“Gunshot?”

“Comstock Pendergast had furnished his… house of pain with a single-shot derringer. He gave his victim a choice. You could go mad; you could die of fright-or you could take your life.”

“And Diogenes chose the last.”

“Yes. But the bullet didn’t… didn’t kill him. It only damaged him.”

“How did your parents react?”

“At first they said nothing. Then they pretended Diogenes was sick, scarlet fever. They kept it secret. They were afraid of the scandal. They told me the fever had altered his vision, his sense of taste and smell. That it deadened one eye. But now I know it must have been the bullet.”

Glinn felt a chill horror settle over him, and he felt an illogical need to wash his hands. The thought of something so awful, so utterly terrifying, that a seven-year-old could possibly be induced to… He forced the thought away.

“And the small chamber you were imprisoned in,” he said. “These photographs you mention-what were they of?”

“Official crime scene photographs and police sketches of the world’s most terrible murders. Perhaps a way to prepare for the… the horror beyond.”

An awful silence settled over the small room.

“And how long was it before you were rescued?” Glinn asked at last.

“I don’t know. Hours, a day perhaps.”

“And you awakened from this living nightmare under the impression Diogenes had become sick. And that accounted for his long absence.”

“Yes.”

“You had no idea of the truth.”

“No, none.”

“And yet Diogenes never realized that you had repressed the memory.”

Abruptly Pendergast stopped in his pacing. “No. I suppose he didn’t.”

“As a result, you never apologized to your brother, tried to make it up to him. You never even mentioned it, because you had utterly blocked out all memory of the Event.”

Pendergast looked away.

“But to Diogenes, your silence meant something else entirely. A stubborn refusal to admit your mistake, to ask forgiveness. And that would explain…”

Glinn fell silent. Slowly he pushed his wheelchair back. He did not know everything-that would await the computer analysis-but he knew enough to see it now, clearly, in its broadest brushstrokes. Almost from birth, Diogenes had been a strange, dark, and brilliant creature, as had many Pendergasts before him. He might have swung either way, if the Event had not occurred. But the person who emerged from the Doorway to Hell-ravaged emotionally as well as physically-had turned into something else entirely. Yes, it all made sense: the gruesome images of crime, of murder, that Pendergast had endured… Diogenes’s hatred of the brother who refused to speak of the ordeal he had caused… Pendergast’s own unnatural attraction to pathological crimes… Both brothers now made sense. And Glinn now knew why Pendergast had repressed the memory so utterly. It was not simply because it was so awful. No-it was because the guilt was so overwhelming it threatened his very sanity.