Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

Paul didn’t shake it.

“I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”

Paul blinked. He had no response to that. Lilli looked at him, confusion showing in her eyes.

“I’m assuming our friend Gavin has informed you of the peculiar situation we now find ourselves in?”

“Friend? You have an interesting way of dealing with friends.”

“Oh, but he was a friend,” the old man said. “Though that must seem strange to you now. But he made his own choices. I understand he used a gun to exercise his choice. I don’t see how there was ever another option for us. I also understand he fired first?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Our friend didn’t flip the table over and draw his gun? Because that’s how it was described to me. Are my men lying to me?”

Paul was silent.

“No? And then there was Margaret. I assume Gavin had some hand in that as well. Now, you never answered my question. Did our mutual friend inform you of the facts regarding the current situation? In short, do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, he told me about you.”

“Good,” the old man said. “Then this will go faster.”

The old man turned to the guards. “Put him in the guest quarters.”

“And her?” Redbeard said, gesturing to Lilli.

The old man waved his hand absently. “Same,” he said. And with that, he turned and walked away. But before he’d gotten very far, he glanced at Paul from over his shoulder. “We’ll talk later tonight.”

The guest quarters had bars on the windows.

Lilli sat on the bed while Paul moved through the room, opening every drawer in the dresser and both nightstands. The room was small and appointed very much like a hotel room, right down to the sturdy furniture.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a weapon of opportunity.”

“What kind of weapon do you expect to find here?”

“That’s why it’s called ‘of opportunity.’ You know it when you see it.”

He opened the bottom drawer of the little desk that sat near the wall. He slammed it shut again. His gaze cast about the room. He bent low and looked under the bed.

Eventually, he sat next to Lilli on the bed.

“Nothing,” he said.

She touched his hand.

“You didn’t think they’d be dumb enough to leave anything dangerous in here, did you?”

“I had to check.”

Her hand slipped into his, and she squeezed.

Later, just as the light was leaving the window, a knock came on the door. A moment later, the door opened, and a guard stepped in.

“Paul, Mr. Johansson would like to see you.”

The guard was six-four, all shoulders—a linebacker in a suit.

“I’m not leaving without her,” Paul said.

“She’s staying here,” the linebacker responded.

“No.”

Another guard appeared in the doorway, even bigger, if possible, than the first one. Paul assumed the choice of guards was intentional. A way of saying something without saying it. A way of discouraging an independent opinion about whether he’d be leaving the room or not. Paul made the decision not to give in.

“If I’m leaving this room, she’s coming with me.”

“You’re making this more difficult than it has to be, Mr. Carlsson,” the second guard said. He spoke over the shoulder of the man in front of him. His tone exuded reasonableness.

Paul shook his head. “I’m not leaving her.”

The first guard’s tone wasn’t as patient as the second’s. “You are leaving her,” he snapped. He obviously wasn’t used to this kind of open defiance. “Now.”

Lilli touched Paul’s arm. “Paul, go.”

“Lilli—”

The reasonable guard broke in: “He says he wants to see you, and that means we’re going to bring you. The condition you arrive in is the only matter up for debate here.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lilli soothed. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Reluctantly, Paul allowed himself to be convinced. He followed the men out of the room, and the first guard locked the door behind him.

They made their way down a long hall, then climbed a winding stair to another level. The stairs, Paul noticed, were designed to look like a DNA double helix.

“After you,” the guard said when they came to an enormous door at the end of the hall.

Paul pushed through the door, into a library.

The old man was standing before the stacks, looking up at the wall of books. Big, hardbound tomes filled shelves from floor to ceiling, extending the full length of the chamber. Here the lighting wasn’t fluorescent; instead, the warm, full glow of incandescence exuded from a series of panels along the back wall, and ceiling, and floor. An enormous wooden table dominated the room, while the table itself was dominated by yet more books, piled like an uneven cityscape—leather-bound skyscrapers stacked in mimicry of some blocky 1950s metropolis. Altogether there must have been thousands of books. It was as impressive a private library as Paul had ever seen.

“Have you heard of The Modern Synthesis ?” The old man’s voice seemed to filter through the piles of books. It was the opposite of an empty church, where your voice might echo hollowly off the walls. Here your voice was eaten by the room.

“Yeah.”

“Have you read it?”

“It’s one of the banned books.”

“Have you read it?” the old man repeated.

“I have.”

“And what about this?” he asked, pulling a large dark book free from the shelves. The old man held the book out for Paul to see.

“The Bible?”

“Also a banned book, in some parts of the world.”

The old man placed the book down on the table and gestured for Paul to come closer.

Paul stood next to the old man, his leg brushing the table. The old man was tall but frail. Paul thought about killing him. The image flashed through his mind. His hands around the old man’s neck. The way his throat would feel when he crushed it. What his eyes would look like when the life had gone out of them.

“Turn to Genesis chapter three, verse twenty,” the old man said.

Paul turned the pages.

“Now read it.”

“‘And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.’”

“‘Mother of all living.’ What do you think of that?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“They were cast out from the garden for their sins,” the old man said. “God was angry, because they’d eaten the fruit of knowledge. His punishment was swift.” The old man closed his eyes and quoted from memory: “‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.’”

The old man opened his eyes and looked at Paul. “Thus were Cain and Abel begotton. And then Cain slew Abel. There is another verse I’d like you to read. Genesis four, lines sixteen and seventeen.”

Paul flipped through the Bible until he found the verse. He read aloud, “‘And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch.’”

The old man smiled. “You see, Paul, that was what got me. That was what started all this.” He gestured around himself, but Paul had the sense that he meant something larger. The entire compound. Everything. “That is what sent me down this path. Reading Genesis, when I was a young boy in school.”

The old man held out his hand, and Paul gave him back the Bible. The old man looked down at the pages, creased and yellowed with age.

“Because even as a boy I wondered…” The old man closed the Bible. “This boy Cain, cast out from paradise, who did he marry?”