The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 55

THE DARKNESS OF the night surrounded Ryan like a cloak, yet it was a cloak that gave no warmth; his whole body — even his spirit — was suffused with a paralyzing cold. Yet when a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, passing Ryan without so much as a glance, Ryan followed. He knew who the figure was: Tom Kelly, the man who had beaten up his mother.

The man he was going to kill.

Why? Why not just call the police — they’d take care of Tom Kelly. But even as he asked himself the question, even as he silently stalked his prey, the answer also rose in his mind.

Why not?

The street was empty; a heavy mist hung in the air; the only light came from a single lamp in the middle of the square across the cobbled lane.

Tom Kelly must be an idiot to be walking alone after what he’d done.

So he deserved to die.

Ryan’s fingers closed on the knife in his pocket and a moment later it was out of his pocket, its glittering blade flicking open with the gentlest touch to the release.

Ryan quickened his step, closing the gap between himself and Tom Kelly. As he neared the man, the knife in Ryan’s hand grew warm, its heat spreading quickly through his body. He felt a smile spreading over his lips as he reached out to snake his left arm around Tom Kelly’s head, to jerk it backward, exposing the flesh and tendons of the man’s neck to the blade clutched tight in Ryan’s trembling right hand.

Then with one vicious swipe of the blade—

Ryan awoke, gasping. The street was gone; so too was the icy chill of the night.

He was in his bed in his room at St. Isaac’s, and instead of clutching the handle of a bloody knife, his fingers were clenched only on his own sheet and blanket.

The thrill of what he’d been about to do was still tingling in his body.

Ryan lay back on his damp pillow, willing the memories to fade away, but no matter what he did, every time he closed his eyes, the vision hung once more in the darkness. Worse, the thrill he’d felt in anticipation of what he’d been about to do also came flooding back, and he felt his fingers twitching as if the knife were still clutched in them.

Terrified by what dreams might come if he let himself go back to sleep, Ryan sat up and put his bare feet on the cold floor beneath his bed. Clay Matthews breathed rhythmically in his bed on the other side of the room, and Ryan knew he couldn’t turn on his reading light without waking him.

Maybe all he needed was to get out of bed for a while, and shake the last remnants of the dream. Silently, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. Padding down the hall to the common room, his footfalls were as silent here as they had been in his dream, and when he came to his destination it was as dark and as deserted as the street he’d been wandering in his nightmare, the only illumination coming from the streetlamp in front of the school.

The last thing he wanted to do was to talk with some priest or nun, or even one of his dorm-mates, so he neither turned on the ancient television that crouched in the far corner, nor a light to read by.

Instead, he sat alone in the darkness, still trying to rid his mind of the violence in his nightmare.

Where had it come from?

Even as he posed the question, he knew the answer: the violence had come from inside his own being, from the dark presence that had emerged from deep within him when Father Sebastian had taken him to the small chapel hidden in the depth of St. Isaac’s School.

He could feel that presence spreading through him, its tendrils twisting around him, tightening their grip on him with every minute that crept by.

He paced the room nervously, as if by sheer movement he could rid himself of the thing that was growing inside him. His eyes flicked from the glass-fronted cases filled with old books to the dark oil paintings depicting St. Isaac himself, all of them framed in fading gilt, then to the worn furniture that seemed to have been collected from a half dozen different times and places. He moved to the window flanked by threadbare brocade draperies with torn and dingy lace curtains covering the glass. Ryan pulled back the curtain and gazed out. A light mist hung over the cobbled street, exactly as it had in his dream, and the sidewalks and the park were equally as deserted, but from somewhere far away he heard the faint moan of a siren.

An ambulance? Ryan leaned his forehead against the cool glass, wondering if it might be going to the same hospital where his mother still lay unconscious.

The same hospital where he, himself, ought to be, sitting next to her and holding her hand instead of standing here looking out over Boston and worrying about a nightmare.

Except that when he had seen her — when he’d touched her — she’d screamed.

Screamed, and jerked away from him, as if she knew about the thing that was inside him, growing steadily, threatening to utterly overwhelm him. And if it did—

If only he could see her, and talk to her, and tell her what was happening. But of course he couldn’t, not now.

Not tonight.

Not until she woke up.

If she woke up.

Ryan shuddered in the darkness as he thought once more of the nightmare. Of it turning into reality, of finding himself actually clutching a knife and holding it against someone’s throat, of feeling the blade sink into the flesh and slash at the tendons, ripping open the aorta to let human blood flow.

A movement beyond the window distracted him from the vision in his mind, and he peered into the darkness to see a silver car creeping down the street to come to a silent stop in front of the steps of St. Isaac’s. A moment later, a man clad in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a dark jacket ran down the steps and got into the car. Just before pulling the car door closed, the man glanced upward, seeming to look directly at the window from which Ryan was gazing.

Father Sebastian Sloane!

Ryan looked at the clock that hung on the wall above the television.

Almost 3:30.

Was there some sort of emergency? But what kind of emergency would make Father Sebastian leave in such a hurry in the middle of the night?

And not dressed in the cassock he had always worn before?

The car made a U-turn in front of the building, and as it did, the streetlight caught the face of the driver.

Ryan gasped and stepped back.

It couldn’t be! Surely it had only been a trick of the light!

Too late, Ryan peered out the window once more, but by now the car was gone.

The street was empty.