On the west side of the church, as on the east side, one window near ground level serves the basement. At one time, these panes brought light into that low space. The glass has long ago shattered, and recently Asher has replaced it with inch-thick plywood screwed into place from the exterior.
Two latches secure the hinged window to the casing. He releases them and swings it out of the way. The opening is three feet wide and twenty inches high, sufficient to receive most cadavers, though it is not the route by which he could insert an obese person into his collection.
Asher disconnects the bungee cords and rolls the corpse off the pallet. With an effort that causes a thin sweat to slick his brow, he shoves the late historian through the window as if forcing a thick, padded envelope through a mail slot.
The dead man splashes into the trapped storm runoff that is about two feet deep in the church basement. There he will decompose among the others who float in those dark, fetid waters like former passengers who fell overboard from Death’s gondola during a transit of the River Styx.
Asher inhales the miasma that rises out of the open window. Although many would consider it a stench, he savors it as evidence of progress toward the implementation of the philosophy that he is so brilliantly explicating in the pages of his historic manifesto. This is a fragrance, not a stink, the sweet perfume that will mantle the world during its transition from human domination to human absence.
38
Ophelia Poole was huddled with Colson Fielding in the influx of pale light where the roof of the add-on sacristy met the back wall of the church, when a noise alerted her to the possibility that the maniac, Optime, might be returning. She stepped out of the sacristy into the dark sanctuary as something splashed in the catacombs that lay under the plank floor. Disturbed water sloshed back and forth against the stone walls of the basement, raising in her mind’s eye macabre images of ghastly swimmers seeking a way out of their dismal tarn. Something thumped against the farther wall of the building. A few lesser noises followed. The agitated water subsided, and quiet settled on the church once more.
When it seemed that a visit from their jailer wasn’t impending, she returned to the boy. Brow furrowed as though he was desperately calculating, Colson stared at the swath of sky revealed by the narrow gap in the roof. He was a cute kid with tousled dark hair. Ophelia wished he were taller, more muscular, with something of the street about him. She pitied him for what he’d already endured, but she was grateful that she didn’t any longer have to face alone what might be coming.
She was impressed that he could bite down on his grief, would not cry, would not dwell on his father’s death, but instead focused on the hope of escape and vengeance. He seemed to possess an innate toughness that perhaps he was just discovering in himself.
“It’s not that far up there,” he said. “Like maybe twelve feet. If you could stand on my shoulders . . .”
“I’m not a gymnast,” she said. “Are you?”
“No. But I have this.” From a pocket of his jeans, he produced a Swiss Army knife.
“How’d you manage to keep that?”
“The sonofabitch made me empty my pockets, so I was like . . . like begging him not to kill me. He was getting off on how scared I was, staring into my eyes, not watching my hands close enough. He’s not just a killer, that guy, he’s some kind of freaking pervert. I don’t know what, but he’s something.”
In the interest of not scaring the kid further, Ophelia chose not to share the fact that Optime was such a fanatic that he had castrated himself.
Once more turning his attention to the separation between the sacristy roof and the church, Colson said, “If I could get up there, I could maybe work at the edges of the hole with the knife. It’s got all kind of tools, like a wood saw and a corkscrew and stuff.”
Just then descending from high noon, the sun began to align with the gap in the roof. The infall of light grew much brighter, and an unobstructed beam slanted down on them, golden and warm, with motes of dust turning lazily in the dazzling shaft. Perhaps the direct lance of sunshine ought to have given Ophelia hope; however, it seemed to mock her with a false promise of freedom, and the hole above appeared to grow smaller, more distant.
39
Women found Kenny Deetle attractive and fun to be around, and they thought that his work as a white-hat hacker was cool and daring and edgy, so he didn’t spend a lot of nights alone. This girl he’d met the previous evening, Leigh Ann Bruce, was herself a keyboard kick-ass, capable of cracking any system, backdooring it for future ease of access, and installing a rootkit of such exceptional design that she could pull a Claude Rains and remain invisible even to the best IT-security teams who suspected her presence. Kenny liked her, and he might have learned to love her, but he was unnerved by her exhibitionism. She was great to look at, and in bed she was a feast for the eyes, a smorgasbord of rich visual desserts; spending one night with her put him at risk of diabetes of the libido. Once out of her clothes, however, Leigh Ann seemed to forget how to dress herself. She prepared breakfast in the nude, read the newspaper in the nude, washed the dishes in the nude. Even after she showered, she paraded around without putting on so much as a pair of socks. The warehouse apartment was industrial chic, lots of drab open space, rooms flowing into one another without walls, and he had to admit that she warmed it up. But he worked best when nothing was more interesting to look at than his HP screen. As he sat at his main computer, she leaned over his left shoulder, over his right shoulder, and though hers were the most perfect breasts he’d ever seen, eventually he found himself thinking, Not these again. Kenny wasn’t a prude, but he wasn’t a satyr, either; he had a job to do for Wyatt Rider, and when he was working, he was, damn it, working. Finally, exasperated, he took her to bed again, hoping that a vigorous half hour in the sheets would punctuate the day’s erotic activities with an exclamation point, encouraging her to put on her clothes. Afterward, Kenny dressed, but Leigh Ann went to his backup computer and sat down, Lady Godiva on an office chair instead of a horse.