“Look,” she said.
Above the island, in the air and in the leaves of the great wych elm, Charlie could see thousands of tiny glowing specks, like fireflies. Not drifting, really, so much as lifting upward into the black sky, a cyclone of fiery blossoms, winking and sparking as they went. Charlie had never seen anything so beautiful.
“It’s the orsine,” said Komako. “The Spider’s generating the orsine.”
“What does it mean?” asked Marlowe.
“Means he’s awake,” said Ribs. But there was a new tone in her voice, subdued, wary.
They tied up at an ancient dock even more sloped and crooked than the first, and followed a steep trail up the rocky face of the island. Komako had unhooked the lantern and its weak spill of light illuminated the root-strewn path. At the top of the cliff loomed the ruins. A vast dark canopy of branches soared up out of the broken stones. That was the great wych elm.
It had been a refuge of several buildings once, all of them now collapsed. The island had a creepy, haunted air to it, as if something watched them. Charlie followed Komako and Ribs into the only standing building, the largest, its roof long since rotted away. It had been the monastery chapel; now flagstones were missing from the floor, and shrubs and roots had burst up everywhere, desiccated leaves blown up against the shadows. Where the altar should have been, the huge dark silence of the wych elm now grew: a massive sprawl of roots, spilling out on all sides.
Komako didn’t lead them that far. She stopped at a small apse in the southerly wall and set the lantern down and brushed away a layer of dirt from the ground. Underneath lay a wooden door. The flesh giant turned the ring, lightly, easily, as if it weighed nothing, and hauled the door groaning upward. A dank gasp of air came out. Inside was a stone stair, descending into a greater darkness.
“Uh,” said Charlie, looking around at the others. “Wait. We’ve got to go down there?”
“You’re not afraid of the dark, Charlie?” Komako grinned. “What can hurt you down there?”
“Charlie isn’t scared of anything,” said Marlowe.
Komako lifted the lantern. It cast her face into crooked shadow, it darkened the hollows of her eyes. “Is that right, Charlie?” she said softly. “You’re not afraid of anything?”
Charlie swallowed.
“There’s another way in, Charlie,” came Ribs’s voice, out of the gloom of the nave. “A proper door, like, just round the front. But it’s locked.”
“Dr. Berghast has the key,” Oskar explained.
“Rrrh,” mumbled his giant, sounding distinctly unimpressed, still holding the trapdoor.
“Let me guess,” muttered Charlie. “This way leads to the crypt?”
“Through it,” corrected Komako.
Ribs poked Charlie in the arm. “Hey, what’d the skeleton say to his sick neighbor? Stop your bloody coffin.”
Oskar giggled, a nervous high-pitched giggle that echoed off away into the crypt.
“Oh my God,” muttered Komako. “I’m here with a bunch of children.” She looked back at Marlowe, suddenly abashed. “No offense.”
But Charlie was still staring down into the darkness. “Tell me again, whose idea was this?”
“Ribs’s,” said Komako.
“Ko’s,” said Ribs.
Marlowe reached up and took Charlie’s hand. “Mine,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
* * *
They left the flesh giant in the apse of the ruined monastery, shreds of fog drifting past. Ribs suggested in her salty way that maybe the smell of it might put off the Spider from talking to them; when Oskar protested, Ribs suggested they put it to a vote. All hands went up.
And so they went down, into the catacombs, the five of them, ghostly and pale in their robes while the dim light of the lantern played off the stone walls and the dripping of the darkness reached their ears. Charlie kept Marlowe close, his hand on the back of the little boy’s neck, steering him gently in the blackness. The stairs came out onto a narrow passageway, with little windows cut into the rock, and bones piled up crosswise with skulls laid out on top. Those were the monks of an age long passed, eye sockets hollow and dark.
As they went, Charlie peered around: the ceiling was lost in shadow, and there were more passages opening both to the left and the right. On the walls now he saw the mummified remains of monks, shriveled to the size of children, suspended somehow in their robes on the stone walls. But the floor was dry, and scraped softly as they went; the air was cold; the dark was quieter than any quiet Charlie had ever known, so quiet it seemed almost to make a sound, like a bell, in his ears.