“You, my dear chap,” said Looks Away, “will have to stand in line.”
Grey knelt beside one of the monsters and plucked a feather out, sniffed it, winced, and tossed it away. Then he peered at the chunk of ghost rock. “I thought there was some kind of rules to this ghost rock business. Same with the Harrowed. The way Brother Joe put it, this was ghost rock or some demons or whatever taking over corpses. That’s what we saw in Nevada, and it’s what you told me happened when that factory blew up in Europe. If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, then how do you explain extinct dinosaurs with ghost rocks in their chests? I mean… give me a place to stand so I can think about that the right way.”
“I’m afraid I can’t offer you such a refuge, Grey,” said Looks Away. “I am in totally unknown territory here. You know as much as I do.”
“Which means we don’t know enough.”
Grey began to reach out and touch the stone, but Looks Away shook his head. “Not with your bare hand.”
“Why? Does it do something?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Looks Away, “but we can surmise that the chunks of ghost rock he’s implanted in the chests of his victims — human and animal — allow him some measure of control. They’re clearly his slaves.”
Grey drew his knife and used the point to touch the stone. It made a dull metallic tink sound. Nothing else happened. “So he took something that was already dangerous as hell and used black magic to make it worse?”
“Yes. We’ve only begun to understand the nature and properties of ghost rock. Dr. Saint is exploring new scientific directions, and now we have proof that Deray’s necromancy has taken him in even more obscure and frightening directions. It’s so much to consider, but for now we’d best leave it be. We have a job of work ahead of us.”
“Work?” asked Grey. “As in getting the hell out of here?”
Looks Away shook his head. “I don’t think I can do that, Grey. Not at this point. Not after all that we’ve seen. I think we have to gird our loins and enter the belly of the beast.”
“Meaning what?”
Looks Away stood and picked up one of the lanterns. “Didn’t you see this?”
“See what?” asked Grey as he rose.
“I saw it just as those beasties rushed us.”
The Sioux walked a couple of paces toward the back of the room and the spill of light revealed a sight Grey had not noticed before. The rear wall of the chamber was in ruins. The naked stone had been shattered, pushed outward by some titanic force, and lay in heaps of rubble. Beyond the debris was a gaping maw of a hole that yawned like the mouth of some fabled dragon.
“I think that is where our monsters came from,” said Looks Away. “And if my guess is correct that tunnel will lead us to the answers we seek.”
Grey Torrance closed his eyes for a moment, and in the brief silence he could once more hear the muffled footsteps of the ghosts who haunted him. They were behind him and darkness opened before him.
“Damn it,” he breathed. Then he opened his eyes and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Grey didn’t know exactly what “girding one’s loins” meant, but he squared his shoulders and set his jaw as they moved toward the gaping hole. Looks Away padded along beside him, his face grim and determined.
As they approached the hole it became apparent that the destruction had not been accomplished by anything like dynamite. The whole wall had been pushed into the chamber. They stopped at the entrance and held out their lanterns.
“Jesus Christ,” said Grey.
Beyond the hole was a tunnel. Roughly round and crudely made, it curled around down into the bowels of the earth. The sides of it glistened and when Looks Away reached to touch it he quickly withdrew his hand. His fingers were wet and sticky and they smelled like rotting fish.
“What the hell is that?” asked Grey.
“I have no idea,” said the Sioux as he rubbed his fingers together under his nose. “It’s disturbingly like the secretions a worm makes. But God — the smell.”
The odor wafting up from the tunnel was clearly the source of the stench they’d smelled earlier. Here, though, it hadn’t been diluted by distance. The stink was almost palpable.
Looks Away drew a breath and raised his leg to step over the fractured rim.
“You’ll die in there,” said a voice behind them.
They both whirled, bringing their guns to bear.
A figure stood at the far end of the chamber, surrounded by the corpses of the reanimated dinosaurs. It was a woman who wore the shredded remnants of a sheer dressing gown. Her hair was up in a loose bun, her eyes were filled with dark mystery. A dreadful wound had been opened in her side through which they could see purple coils of her intestines. She seemed to be bathed in the glow of a pale blue-white light, but she cast no shadow.
Beside him, Grey heard Looks Away utter a low cry of bottomless pain and endless fear.
It was Veronica Chesterfield.
And she was dead.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The dead woman spoke in a voice that was as cold and alien as a cemetery wind.
“Thomas,” she said. “My sweet man.”
Looks Away would have fallen to his knees if Grey hadn’t dropped his lantern and caught him. The lantern fell over and burning oil spilled out. The flames cast wild shadows onto the walls, though none were stranger than the dead thing that stood before them.
“What…,” began Looks Away in a strained choke, “what are you?”
She held her arms wide. The gesture pulled the bloody gossamer tight across her ample breasts, and the wisps of cloth seemed to float around her as if stirred by a wind that neither man could feel. Grey realized that the blue-white light did not fall upon her but was instead part of her, as if she were alight within. It was beautiful in its way, but in this moment and in this place there was nothing in Grey’s heart but terror.
“Don’t you know?” she asked. “Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you know your own loving Veronica?”
“God rot you,” snarled Looks Away, “you are not her. Damn you to Hell!”
“To Hell?” mused Veronica, letting her arms drop. “No, my love. That’s not where I belong. Nor do I belong among the living. I walk now between those worlds.”
“I don’t… I don’t…”
She smiled sadly. “Such a brave man. You’ve faced such horrors already. Will you shrink in fear from a helpless spirit?”
“Spirit? You’re a… a ghost?” breathed the Sioux.
“Though I’ve only been dead for a short time I feel as I’ve lived forever here in the world of spirits. Ghost? That is so impure a word, and so shallow. Call me that if it helps, but know that it does not truly tell you what I’ve become.”
“You can’t be here. It’s wrong… it’s a lie. What are you that you are so cruel?”
For a moment the she-thing before them seemed to waver, her face twisted into doubt. “I don’t mean to be cruel,” she said in a voice that was filled with sadness. “Truly I do not.”
“Then why do this?” demanded Looks Away. “You have no right to use Veronica’s body like this. It’s unholy.”
“Unholy? That’s a strange word for you to use, Thomas. I thought you didn’t believe in God. Or the Devil. Or anything. Isn’t that what you told me? Or, isn’t that what you told her? That you were a man of science, not of ancient superstitions.”
Grey saw his friend stiffen. “How could you know what I said to her?”
“Because I am her. When she died, I rose from the flesh, but all that she was I am except that flesh. Please, Thomas, try and understand.”