Douglas Preston - Crimson Shore

The room was dim, lit only by the fire that guttered low in the hearth. Before it, in a wing chair, Proctor could see a motionless figure, indistinct in the faint light. Mrs. Trask walked over to the figure, placed the tray on a side table beside the chair.

“I thought you might like a cup of tea, Miss Greene,” she said solicitously.

“No thank you, Mrs. Trask,” came Constance’s low voice.

“It’s your favorite. Jasmine, first grade. I also brought you some madeleines. I baked them just this afternoon — I know how fond you are of them.”

“I’m not particularly hungry,” she answered. “Thank you for your trouble.”

“Well, I’ll just leave them here in case you change your mind.” Mrs. Trask smiled maternally, turned, and headed for the library exit. By the time she reached Proctor, the smile had faded and the look on her face had grown worried once again.

“I’ll only be gone a few days,” she said to him in a low tone. “My sister should be home from the hospital by next weekend. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

Proctor nodded, then watched her bustle her way back toward the kitchen before returning his gaze to the figure in the wing chair.

It had been over two weeks since Constance had come back to the mansion at 891 Riverside Drive. She had returned, grim and silent, without Agent Pendergast, and with no explanation of what had happened. It had taken Proctor time, patience, and effort to coax the story out of her. Even now, the story made little sense and he was unsure what really happened. What he did know, however, was that the vast house, lacking Pendergast’s presence, had changed — changed utterly. And so, too, had Constance.

When she’d first returned from Exmouth, Constance had locked herself in her room for days, taking meals only with the greatest reluctance. When she at last emerged, she seemed a different person: gaunt, spectral. Proctor had always known her to be coolheaded, reserved, and self-possessed. But in the days that followed, she was by turns listless and then suddenly full of restless, aimless energy, pacing about the halls and corridors as if looking for something. She abandoned all interest in the pastimes that had once so possessed her: researching the Pendergast family ancestry, antiquarian studies, reading, playing the harpsichord. After a few anxious visits from Lieutenant D’Agosta, Captain Laura Hayward, and Margo Green, she had refused to see anyone. She had also appeared to be — Proctor could think of no better way to put it — on her guard. The only times she showed a spark of her old self was on the rare occasions when the phone rang, or when Proctor brought the mail back from the post office box. Always, always, he knew, she was hoping for word from Pendergast. But there had been none.

Proctor had taken it upon himself to gather all the information he could about his employer’s disappearance. The search for his body had lasted five days. Since the missing person was a federal agent, exceptional effort had been expended. Coast Guard cutters had searched the waters off Exmouth; local officers and National Guardsmen had combed the coastline from the New Hampshire border down to Cape Ann, looking for any sign of Pendergast — even so much as a shred of clothing. Divers had carefully examined rocks where the currents might have hung up a body, and the seafloor was scrutinized with sonar. But there had been nothing. The case remained officially open but, finally, became inactive. While the findings were inconclusive, the unspoken conclusion was that Pendergast — gravely wounded in his fight with the creature, struggling against a vicious tidal current, weakened by the continual battering of the waves, and subjected to the fifty-degree water — had been swept out to sea and drowned.

Now, quietly, Proctor approached and took a seat beside Constance. She glanced up at him briefly as he sat down, giving him the faintest smile. Then her gaze returned to the fire. The flickering light cast dark shadows over her violet eyes and her dark bobbed hair.

Since her return, Proctor had taken it upon himself to look after her, knowing that this was what his employer would have wanted. Her troubled state roused unexpected protective feelings within him — ironic, because under normal circumstances Constance was the last person to seek protection from another. And yet, without saying it, Constance seemed glad of his attentions.

He decided, once again, to try to draw her out of herself; to help free her, at least temporarily, from the cycle of guilt and loss that he sensed must be going through her mind.

“Constance?” he said gently.

“Yes?” she asked, eyes still on the fire.

“I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling me the last part of the story. I know you’ve said it before, but I still don’t quite understand what happened — what really happened — in the struggle with that... creature called Morax — just who he was and how he was able to... to overcome Mr. Pendergast.”

For a long time, she remained quiet. At last, she stirred and — still looking at the fire — began to speak. “I explained to you about the genetic abnormality, a vestigial tail, that caused Morax to look as he did; about how the Exmouth witches, in essence, enhanced the abnormality over the generations through breeding, as someone might a strain of dog. The witches were obsessed with his similarity to the images of Morax in old grimoires and demonic catalogs. The breeding line were treated as sub-humans, kept locked up in filthy conditions, used — I should say abused — for satanic rituals. That is why, once Morax got free, the main victims of his homicidal attention were members of the coven. The odd few were innocent bystanders, people who got in his way.”

“But...” Proctor sought the right words. “How could this freak get the better of Mr. Pendergast?”

She glanced over the tea service for a moment before returning her gaze to the fire. “He didn’t get the better of Aloysius. The creature perished.”

“But Mr. Pendergast—”

“—is not dead.” She finished his sentence sharply — but for the first time, he heard an uncertain tone in her voice. Also, the guardedness she had exhibited since her return, Proctor noticed, had at last faded.

Proctor took a long breath. Once again, he tried to divert her thoughts. “But how did the brute manage to kill so many?”

“The treatment he endured turned him into a sociopathic beast. Only one thing kept him under control — beyond chains and whips, of course. And that was the promise they had apparently made to him, again and again, that one day they would take him above ground to see the sun, to bask in its warmth and light. He seems to have become obsessed with it. When he escaped the maze of subterranean tunnels — only to find a dark night with no moon — he thought he had been duped. And his anger burst all bounds.” She paused. “He did get his wish, though... just before he died.”

“Lot of good it did him.”

Then she straightened in her chair. “Proctor, speaking of the subterranean... I’ve decided to go below.”

The abrupt announcement took him aback. “You mean — down there, where you lived before?”

She said nothing.

“Why?”

“To... teach myself to accept the inevitable.”

“Why can’t you do that here, with us? You can’t go down there again.”

She turned and stared at him with such intensity that he was taken aback. He realized that it was hopeless to change her mind. At least this implied she was finally accepting that Pendergast was gone — that was progress, of sorts. Perhaps.

Now she rose from her chair. “I’ll write a note for Mrs. Trask, instructing what clothes and necessities to leave inside the service elevator. I’ll take one hot meal a day, at noontime. Left in a covered dish in the elevator.”